


Seasons: Fight the Future

by Beshter



Series: X-files Seasons [6]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Aliens, Almost Kiss, Bees, Conspiracy, Movie: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), Virus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-20 07:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15529308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beshter/pseuds/Beshter
Summary: The work of five years for Dana Scully and Fox Mulder is gone. As they face what this means for their partnership, Scully becomes a tool yet again to strike Mulder the final blow in his quest for the truth.





	1. The New Assignment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully faces a new future post X-files.

Dana Scully held a physics degree from the University of Maryland. She had a medical degree from Stanford University, where she eventually specialized in pathology. She went on to study the subject at the FBI Academy in Quantico, where she graduated near the top of her class. Her performance was so impressive she was asked to teach there for three years, before she was assigned to the X-files division as an active, field agent. While there she had served with one of the most brilliant, if misunderstood, criminal profilers the Bureau had ever produced, trying to solve crimes no one else would even consider given their unusual nature. She had been kidnapped, shot at, tested on, and nearly died for the answers they had tried to discover. She had lost friends, family members, even the ability to have children, all for the cause she had taken up with Fox Mulder. In the end, she took a certain pride in the fact that at the end of the day she stood up for what was right rather than kowtow to politics and ensure herself a cushy desk job somewhere on the upper levels of the Hoover Building,

Instead she was now unpacking her small box at a used and scarred desk, one that had seen better years perhaps twenty years before. At least it had a working computer, and at least it was a desk. In five years Scully hadn't had a desk to call her own. She'd worked from a makeshift table, without the comfort of drawers or private spaces to keep her things. It didn't have a nameplate announcing it as her area to work. Not that this desk had much of a nameplate either, or privacy for that matter. Where before she had a table in an office of two, now she had her much longed for desk in an office of thirty, the bullpen that serviced the minor jobs and small casework detail that was given to agents not yet trusted with full field duty. Scully was surrounded by young, fresh faced rookie agents, all dutifully wandering around the small space, sardines backed in a small, tin can. They occasionally turned to glance at the striking, petite red head, her chin held high as she carefully unpacked the small number of things she was able to save from her area of the now burned and ruined X-files office. They watched curiously as she placed pens neatly into a holder, set her coffee mug, emblazoned with the letters "FBI" at just the right spot to reach it for later coffee consumption, and then ever so carefully placed the two photographs she kept, one of her family, and one of Emily Sim, the little girl who earlier that year had tumbled into Scully's life. The smiling, shining face of the daughter she didn't know she had cheered her somewhat as a shadow fell across it. It was soon followed by a voice that was a hair too happyl, a touch too manic.

"You are Agent Scully?" The face that went with the exuberance smiled toothily at her, a blonde woman with the sort of cheerleader, pep-squad cheerfulness that should be illegal in this hour of the morning. Certainly it was before Scully had her first coffee.

"Yes," Scully managed to slap on something of a friendly expression. "You are?"

"Agent Miller, Andrea Miller. I sort of am the floor greeter here."

Floor greeter? Did the FBI have those? 

"Nice to meet you." Who said Scully couldn't lie?

"It's amazing to meet you! I've heard so much about you!" She gushed with a sort of hyper earnestness that made the part of Scully wonder if there wasn't a group of her buddies somewhere behind a door snickering at her antics. So far, none of the other agents working through their files seemed to notice.

"Really?" Scully could well imagine what anyone on this floor heard about the work she and Mulder did. It was no secret that "Spooky" Mulder was little more than a joke to his peers, the cracked genius who took to the basement when serial killers got to be too much, screaming about aliens taking his little sister when they were kids. While Mulder's name still garnered respect in certain corners, after all his work was still required reading at Quantico as far as Scully knew, his work since had earned little more than sneers.

His latest escapade had involved the kidnapping of a twelve-year-old boy, Gibson Praise, who displayed prodigious psychic ability that they were only beginning to understand. Not only that the child gone missing, but the entire situation had been bungled, ending up with the death of their main suspect and two US Marshals, as well as severely injuring Agent Diana Fowley, Mulder's former love interest. To add insult to injury, the agent running the case, Jeffrey Spender, had decried them both to the Attorney General, who had closed the X-files pending further investigation. She need not have bothered, within the hour the entire office and all of Mulder's years of painstaking research and work was destroyed, fire reducing it all to cinders in minutes. Gone with it were all the opportunities for the answers they were so desperately seeking, as well as the once promising careers that both she and Mulder had.

Their reassignment was the bullpen, the place where only greenest of the graduates ever went, those who faired only mediocre in the grind of FBI training went. Scully had secretly always been pleased she had not shared that fate. She, like her classmate Tom Colton and their group of friends, had all shined in their graduating class from Quantico. Similarly, Mulder had been snapped up immediately, the rising star of his group, he had never set foot into the bullpen. Neither of them had been forced to do the drudge work found there, the background checks, the rap sheet runs, the tedious work of checking up on everyday Americans and making sure they had no minor infractions of federal law. It was the sort of work that Scully had once scoffed at, admittedly feeling herself with her prodigious capabilities as a forensic pathologist above such minor trivialities. Clearly, she was wrong.

Now she was staring up in the face of a woman who was so perky, her face seemed permanently frozen in a charming smile. It was annoying, and vaguely creepy. Scully found she hadn't had enough caffeine this morning yet to deal with this. Instead, she nodded at Agent Miller, unsure of what to say about the woman's enthusiasm at hearing so much about the infamous Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Besides, Scully could just imagine what had been said amongst the new recruits about the two of them - stay well away, if you value your careers.

"Thank you, Agent Miller. Do we come to you if we need anything?"

"Sure," the woman chirped, her head wobbling on her thin neck. "I just wanted to make our newest members of our little family feel at home!"

At her words several of the nearby agents rolled their eyes and snorted, shooting Scully sympathetic looks. Clearly, Scully wasn't the only one who felt unnerved by Agent Miller's enthusiasm. "Errr…thank you."

"Of course!" She clapped her hands together, glancing between Scully's already unpacked and sparsely filled out desk to the empty one that sat just in front of her, the one that conspicuously still had it's trashcan sitting on top of it. "And Agent Mulder, he's not here?"

"Not yet." Scully glanced at the clock up on the wall. It was a quarter till ten, very late for Mulder, who was usually in the office well before most human beings woke up. She'd received no word from him this morning he'd be late, but then he hadn't exactly been thrilled with their reassignment either. Scully half feared he wouldn't arrive at all, but would instead march straight into Skinner's office across the hall and demand access to the X-files again. It was an argument she knew he wouldn't win.

"Well, when he gets in, send him my way! I'll make sure he get everything he needs to settle in." Miller fluttered her fingers as she wandered off cheerfully, a bouncing in her high heels that made Scully's eyes narrow as she watched the other woman walk away. She was sure Mulder wouldn't mind getting the welcome treatment from the likes of Miller. Tall, leggy, blonde, she was the type he used to hook up with when Scully first met him. Except that Diana Fowley was now back on the scene, severely injured, but alive, and likely to make it. What would her presence in Mulder's life now mean? Scully sighed as she settled behind her desk, ignoring the speculative eyes on her as she booted up her new computer. Diana Fowley was the least of her worries at the moment. Right now she simply wanted to help Mulder get back his work, whatever it took. She had invested too much of herself into the X-files to see it all fall apart like this, and if they couldn't do that…well, she reasoned, glancing around the cramped desks and openly wondering stares, she really didn't have much of a reason to stay on with the Bureau. They clearly didn't want to use her pathology skills anymore, and sought to punish her by shoving her in a corner. What other indignities could they possibly visit on the two of them?

A hum of murmurs rose, ghostlike, around Scully, causing her to glance up at the newcomer amongst the ranks. Predictably Fox Mulder caused a stir. He usually did wherever he went within the Bureau. While his brooding moodiness was enough to make most people stare curiously at him, it was the story of his antics usually that caused the whispers to follow him. Most everyone knew of Fox Mulder, the brilliant profiler, the crazed alien chaser, the man who had supposedly died a couple of times, and who took down Section Chief Blevins for corruption. Now he was also the man who had his office set on fire. Mulder was a walking legend, both in good and bad ways, and every rookie watching him as he walked past seemed to reflect that mixed bag of curiosity and amusement, a tall, handsome guy like that looked far too perfectly normal to be a raving lunatic. Didn't he?

"Hi there!" Scully tried to sound enthusiastic as he rounded to his assigned spot, flopping in his chair as he stared desolately at the trashcan on his desk.

"Is this how they greet all the newcomers?" He picked it up to stare at the empty, plastic trash bag inside.

"I think the night crew leaves them up there of an evening." Had anyone ever come down to clean the X-files office in the entire time she had been down there? "Be glad you missed the welcoming committee. I thought she was going to hand out the lemon bars and laced Kool-Aid soon."

"I think I would take them both at the moment," he muttered darkly, setting down his waste basked. Mulder looked as if he hadn't slept once in the week they had been out of the office, and knowing him he hadn't. His suit, while clean, had a vaguely rumpled look to it, his eyes shadowed. He was a man who had lost everything that had given him purpose for eight years. Scully was shocked he was even sitting in the office at all.

"You are late," she pointed out as he puttered around his new desk. It was smaller than his old one and it seemed to ill fit him, rather like his suit that day, or his disheveled, dark hair. Mulder looked as unsettled as Scully guessed he felt. It was unnerving to see him like that.

"Yeah, had an errand to run," he replied, turning on the computer on his desk. Not his computer, not the one with his files. "I went to see Diana."

Scully ignored the lurch in her heart at that statement and admirably pasted on a sympathetic smile. "How is she doing?"

"Much better, the doctors think she'll be out in another week. Then it's bed rest for a while, so I guess that means she'll be in town."

He sounded hopeful about that, of course he would, Scully reasoned darkly. Diana would be a sympathetic ear to the trials and tribulations Mulder would suffer in this indignity. Diana Fowley had a sparkling career with the Bureau. Perhaps she could use her influence to get Mulder out of his spot. She had a vested interest in the X-files, she could push to have them opened again and Mulder involved, and she had a history with Mulder, one that was quite obviously romantic in nature. Scully would be an idiot to think that her partner wasn't lonely after five years. Short of the occasional one-night stands, Mulder had been in no serious relationship since she had known him. The closest he got was Scully, his partner, his best friend, but she was decidedly only that. And while she had come to the uncomfortable realization that her feelings for her partner ran much deeper than just the compatriot nature of two comrades in arms in the same fight, she also knew that Mulder, with his hyper focus on his work, didn't possibly return the sentiment. Scully doubted it had crossed his mind. Diana Fowley shared his vision, his ideas, and his passion for the paranormal. Scully, she was there beside him because she wanted justice for the both of them. Her truth wasn't the same as his.

Which begged the question about why she was sitting there with him in the bullpen?

"So what sort of exciting torment have they envisioned for us here," Mulder grumbled, realizing fairly rapidly he had no office supplies to speak off. They were all destroyed, even his nameplate that had adorned his desk. Patiently, Scully produced a notepad and a box of pens from one of the drawers of her desk, passing them over to him.

"No one has said anything about what our first assignment back is yet, but we have a meeting with Skinner in an hour to discuss what is going on."

"That should be fun." Mulder snorted, glancing up at the ceiling. Sadly, it was too high and too public for him to begin bouncing pencils into it. "Think they'll complain too loudly if I put a little Hendrix on to lighten the mood?"

That was why she was sitting in the bullpen, Scully reminded herself dryly, to babysit him. "I haven't had enough coffee for this yet, Mulder," she muttered, reaching for her mug and standing to go in the direction that she smelled burnt coffee grounds from. She desperately hoped this wasn't how her career was going to end.

"Bring me back some too, if you can," Mulder called over the hum of people at their desks. A few turned to glare at him, but he blithely ignored them as he shot her a vaguely pleading look.

"Sure," she sighed, at this point resigning herself to the whispers she could already feel stirring around her. Let them say what they wanted. It wasn't as if she could stop them anyway. Besides the antics of Mulder and Scully were probably going to be the highlight of their boring, drudging, young FBI agent days, and judging from Mulder's mood, there would be a lot of antics to come.

She hoped that somehow, someway, they got the X-files back again soon.


	2. The Big D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mulder and Scully are assigned to an anti-terrorism case in Dallas.

Mulder had little time to be bored in their new assignment. Within the week they were pulled away from their new, mundane jobs filing paperwork. Scully didn't question Skinner as he pulled Mulder and her out of the bullpen, much to the gawking stares of the rookie agents around them.

"Is this time off for good behavior," Mulder drawled, as if this was detention and they were off to see the principle for throwing spit wads at the ceiling.

Skinner wasn't about to be baited. "You two have been requested in Dallas, ASAP." He ushered them both into his office, past his newest secretary, Arlene. Unlike Kim, who had been well aware of the escapades of her employer's two most troublesome agents, Arlene didn't seem to know what to make of Mulder or Scully yet. She frowned in consternation as Skinner motioned them into his office with instructions to her to hold all calls for the moment.

"Dallas?" Mulder jumped in before Skinner even had a chance to round his desk. "Who would request us in Dallas?" After Mulder's incident with staking a supposed vampire in Texas, the Dallas field office hadn't exactly been sad to see the back of Mulder when he returned to DC.

"Darius Michaud, he needs able bodies to go down there and is pulling every available free agent from every nearby field office he can. Headquarters is sending thirty agents, including you two."

The size of the roll call meant something major was occurring, and judging from the look on Skinner's grim face, it wasn't good. 

"What's going on, sir," Scully asked.

Their supervisor reached inside a locked drawer, pulling out thick briefing memos that he slid across his oak desk. Scully reached for hers at the same time as Mulder, and they began glancing down the thick type, scanning the information.

"A bomb threat was called in on a federal building in Dallas. It's not the first such threat on any courthouse by far, especially not this one, but since Oklahoma City every threat like this has been taken very seriously by the Bureau. The Dallas field office is based in this building and have assessed the threat as being credible."

"Do we know who is claiming responsibility," Scully pressed, as images of the horrors of Alfred P. Murrah building came to mind. No one who saw the scenes from that day would forget it or the destruction that resulted. Many in the FBI had taken it personally three years before when that act of domestic terror had occurred, and it had been a Bureau mantra that it not happen again.

"So far no group has stepped forward to claim it is theirs, though there is a list forming of possible suspected organizations both foreign and domestic. The worry with this bomb goes beyond just the nature of what is in it. It is in a heavy office corridor of Dallas, and it is part of a federal office complex. The FBI and most other justice department services are in the building, including the local office of the US District Attorney, which some think may be the target. But in the same area are other offices, housing other government departments, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, they are all scattered between four buildings in a five block area."

"If the bomb goes off, it has the potential of destroying more than one federal building." Mulder frowned as he scanned the memo, looking thoughtful as he came to its end.

"This has the potential of making Oklahoma City look like an opening salvo if we don't find it." There was no denying the real worry from Skinner. It was a fear that Scully could tell was being felt acutely on the few levels of the FBI that knew exactly what was going on. "Dallas is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Midwest, to have it directly hit like that would be devastating. We aren't talking about casualties in terms of a few hundred here."

"When does our flight leave?" Already, Scully was on the case, mentally looking towards Dallas and the task ahead, secretly pleased she was getting at least this small reprieve from the secretarial pool otherwise known as the bullpen. Mulder beside her seemed less enthusiastic.

"Immediately, the travel office has tickets for you on the next flight to Dallas. Michaud expects you there by four Central time." Skinner's granite jaw worked as he studied his two agents. They had spoken little in the weeks since the X-files closure and it occurred to Scully that their boss was under just as much heat as the pair of them were at the moment. He needed them to help out in the effort to stop this, to prove that they were good agents who could play within the rules when called to if he ever hoped to salvage their work as well as his career. Scully understood the underlying point of why they were being sent to work with Michaud. This was a chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Attorney General, the Justice Department, and the powers that be in the FBI.

"Go do your jobs, Agents. Keep me posted on how things go."

"Yes, sir." Scully recognized Skinner's dismissal as Mulder rose, still circumspect beside her. Something was bothering him, but she managed to herd him out of Skinner's office before confronting him, troubled by whatever formed the worriedly, speculative look in his bright eyes.

"Mulder, don't!" Scully hissed, immediately tugging at his elbow to earn his attention before entering the bullpen. "Whatever you are thinking, don't! This is too important and too many lives are at stake."

"Do you honestly think I'd jerk people around on something like that?" Mulder was justifiably annoyed. When had Mulder ever not taken the lives of civilians seriously? Scully demurred, somewhat, apologetic but still not liking where his racing thoughts seemed to be leading him.

"I'm sure that Michaud and his team are well experienced in finding explosives, whatever you are thinking."

"You seem to be such an expert on that at the moment," he snorted, earning a cold glare out of her. "I don't doubt what Michaud and his team is doing, I am not questioning the seriousness of this at all. Frankly, it scares the pants off me that we might be facing another Timothy McVeigh blowing up people with fertilizer. But what does bother me is that they called the cavalry in, drummed up the forces together, gave us all fair warning. How many other terrorists do you know give you a days notice?"

"Mulder, I've only worked two anti-terror cases with you, I can't say I'm an expert." Not like Diana Fowley was, Scully added privately.

"Whoever planted this was up to something else. It could be a real bomb, and they really do mean to blow everyone to kingdom come. But over twenty-four hours notice…frankly I'm wondering who the hell thinks it's funny enough to call up a situation like this so that the government stands there with egg all of its face."

"Don't you think this is a bit of a stretch for a practical joke?" Did Mulder's paranoia know any bounds?

"Scully, at this point I hope to God it is a practical joke and not the real thing, I'd rather look like an ass than an ass who is staring at hundreds of dead people. Now, I think we have a plane to catch before we scare the kiddies with all of this hushed, whispered talk."

Indeed, they were standing in the doorway to the room filled with desks and several of the agents were watching them with openly curious stares. If the FBI wanted this to get out, they would have announced it to the general population, at the risk of causing utter panic in Dallas. Mulder was right, she reasoned, letting go of his arm as she stalked past him to her desk, gathering her things.

"I'll get my tickets and meet you at National then?" She needed to get home and pack. It wasn't as if she had planned to travel on casework for a while, not assigned to office duty.

"Can't wait for our hot weekend in Vegas," Mulder muttered just loud enough for one of the pretty, younger agents next to him to hear with eyes wide open. 

The look she shot him told him to stop. "An hour and a half at National."

"Right," he sighed, slightly ashamed as he followed her out. "Let's go out and save the world…again."


	3. Following Your Lead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully goes along with Mulder's suggestion.

Perhaps it was just Scully's opinion, but if the FBI wanted to conduct a search for a potentially deadly bomb in a federal building and keep it secret from the general public, they perhaps should run around with jackets emblazoned with the letters "F", "B", and "I" in yellow on the back. They likely also shouldn't have local, Dallas police standing around impressively or a helicopter overhead to warn the locals something bad was going on.

"It sort of takes away from that whole, 'art of surprise' factor, doesn't it?" Mulder squinted up at the helicopter above them, the sound of its wings drumming off the surrounding buildings.

"Why haven't they closed off all the federal area around here?" Scully shielded her eyes against the north Texas sun, white hot in the dead of July and glaring off the pavement. "It doesn't make sense."

"You are the one who keeps assuring me Michaud knows what he is doing," Mulder replied, as beyond them a team of bomb-sniffing dogs worked though a well-manicured flowerbed. "We are supposed to be checking out the parking garage?"

"Looking for any suspicious looking vehicles in the complex." Scully glanced over at the sparsely populated concrete structure. Anyone who should have reported to the building that day was told to stay home, only a few cars remained there, mostly fleet vehicles assigned to the federal departments who were stationed in that building. "We need to keep an eye out for unmarked or rented moving vans, particularly those that have no record of being hired out for use at this time."

"Because that's not tedious or time consuming," Mulder snorted, rubbing his palms against his jeans. In their vinyl, standard issue windbreakers they were both roasting. Scully's hair was already plastered to the back of her neck and Mulder's gray t-shirt had a ring of sweat forming around the collar.

"Mulder, this isn't just boring office work, lives are at stake here." His seeming bored lacksadaisicalness in the face of real danger was stunning Scully. Since their assignment, he had been dragging his feet with this case and it worried her as she tugged at his windbreaker, trying to pull him with her to the parking area beyond. Perhaps there was no alien or psychic, no ghost or other paranormal phenomenon, but it was a terror threat on the American people, and that was real enough.

"Perhaps it's not checking up on a little, old lady's background, but come on, Scully, the parking garage?"

"What would you rather have, the air-conditioned building the bomb might be in?"

"At least I would be cool."

He couldn't be serious? "You act as if there isn't a threat to property and people here."

"There is, I just don't think that it is in the parking garage."

"Oklahoma City happened with a U-Haul filled with fertilizer. You don't believe that possibility is credible?"

"I do but they have twenty agents combing that structure, another forty or so in the building, and we are standing here with our thumbs up our ass, being asked to looked for a suspicious looking vehicle. This is Texas, Scully, they drive with gun racks in the backs of their sedans for crying out loud." From out of the pocket of his windbreaker Mulder produced his ever-present bag of sunflower seeds, purchased at the airport the day before.

"I don't know how much luxury we have to be standing out here chatting about what does and does not constitute a suspicious looking car in Dallas. If the threat is accurate, then we only have three hours left to find the bomb."

"Convenient they gave us the time, too. Very thoughtful terrorists, that." The seed cracked between his teeth as he scanned the distance lazily, across the busy street and mall, beyond to the other federal building close by. That one housed a variety of different federal offices, none of which had been cleared that day, despite the threat just across the street. How had no one thought to empty that office?

"You still believe that this whole thing was a sham, a way of embarrassing the FBI?" It was a long way to go for a laugh in Scully's opinion.

"I'm just saying that someone put a lot of effort to get us to come to this exact building, at this exact time, to make sure we could be here. Maybe I'm just your average, paranoid, anti-social, son-of-a-bitch, but if I were a terrorist out to send a message and cause the biggest ruckus I could, would I be so polite without a reason?"

"A reason? Such as?"

"The bomb is not in this building?" He lazily popped another seed in between his teeth, sucking at it as he began to move not towards the parking structure, but the building across the way. Scully watched him, blinking in confusion. After years of Mulder's wild theories and out-of-the-blue conjectures, she should be used to such strange pronouncements out of him. Mulder's mind worked at a level most other people didn't, making him brilliant as an investigator, but even she failed to see why he suspected this idea.

"Mulder, we can't simply wander off scene, our assignment is…"

"Our assignment is to find the bomb and I have an idea."

"That the bomb is hiding where the caller said it wasn't?"

"I'm saying that we need to be creative here. Terrorists aren't big on giving the good guys a chance to save the day, but they are good at making as big of a spectacle as they possibly can. So what if this is all an elaborate set up for something different."

"Such as?"

"I don't know yet." He had already reached the crosswalk, punching the button as he waited for the walk sign to appear. "But it is worth at least checking out, don't you think?"

Scully wasn't so sure. "Mulder, we are on little more than probation here. We need to play this one straight."

"I'm taking this serious."

"If Michaud gets wind we went off sight on nothing more than a gut feeling?"

"Then I'll take the heat and tell him you were trying to stop me." The light changed and Mulder's long legs began carrying him across the tarry asphalt, forcing Scully to practically run to catch up to him. "Besides, they have more people than they need covering the building over there, the two of us covering one, twelve story building by ourselves. That's a lot more work."

"Unnecessary work," she snapped, nearly tripping on the curb in her haste to follow.

"You won't say that if we find the bomb," he retorted, shoving his seeds back in his pocket. "You work your way up from the middle up, I'll go from the middle down, and if it is all clear, we will make our way back over."

"I have to go up the stairs?" She didn't like that idea at all.

"Hey, look at it this way, it's a chance to tone your legs and thighs." Mulder waved his cell over his shoulder at her. "Call me on this if you find anything suspicious, like a moving van or a gun rack."

"So much for you taking our work seriously," she sighed as he bounded into the marble lobby and towards the building's public stairs.


	4. Professional Responsibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mulder and Scully discover they have to face an OPR review.

"I wanted to tell you first, before word came down from on high about this." Skinner passed the official document across his desk, glancing apologetically first at Mulder, then at Scully. She didn't need to read it to know that the news in there wasn't good. In the days since Dallas a scandal had broken across the media regarding FBI ineptitude and broken protocol. There were demands for someone to lay the blame on, and few people wanted to place it on the heroically dead Darius Michaud.

"What is this?" Mulder blazed furiously as his held up the memo to Skinner, as if their boss had written it personally.

"OPR has called a hearing to investigate the situation in Dallas." Skinner uttered the term "OPR" as if it were a curse word rather than a division. The Office of Professional Responsibility, beholden only to the Attorney General, it was the watchdog group for all the law enforcement and investigative services under the broad umbrella of the Justice Department, and that included the FBI. To many in the Bureau, it was a group that was little more than a pain in the ass, quick to cover the political asses of those higher up without taking into consideration what was truly happening in the real work done by the agents responsible for it. It was clear that this was much the same situation occurring here, only Scully could sense the railroad coming straight at them.

"Sir, why would they call us before OPR?" Scully began to gently pluck a copy from Mulder's fingers, studying it. Words such as "insubordination" and "careless ineptitude" jumped out at her from the tersely written, black and white page.

"Because, Agent Scully, they need someone to hold up to the coals, and Michaud is conveniently dead." Skinner hardly wasted sentiment when it came to internal, Justice Department politics. "And you two happen to be their favorite whipping children at the moment. You both broke protocol going over to that building without informing Michaud."

"And if we hadn't, then hundreds of people would be dead right now because no one would have had any fucking clue the bomb was even there." Mulder was furious, and all pretense of proper behavior in front of their superior went out of the window. His jaw twitched with pent up frustration, and it was all he could do not to leap from his chair and pace the carpeted confines of Skinner's office. "If Scully hadn't busted her ass and taken charge that building would have never been cleared, those people wouldn't have gotten out of there. And if I hadn't been stupid enough to go over there in the first place, we might not have found it at all."

Scully didn't want to point out at this particular juncture that it was more blind luck than anything that had led them to the bomb. She was hot and thirsty and more than a bit cranky with him for dragging her on what had appeared to be little more than a wild goose chase. He had offered to make amends by buying her a soda. If he hadn't, they might never have found the bomb inside the machine. All the people Mulder mentioned she had saved would have been dead and the FBI would have been facing a much more horrific mess than they currently were.

"I recognize that, Mulder, but how the hell did it even occur to you to look in that building? Every lead we had took us to the one across the street, and yet you uncannily knew to go to that one?" After all these years, Skinner still felt the need to call Mulder out on his leaps in logic?

Mulder met his skepticism with his trademark petulance. "I had a hunch. I followed it."

"Yeah, well OPR doesn't follow hunches and neither does the FBI, not without good reason. They will want to know yours."

"You know under any other circumstances Scully and I would be god damned heroes! So is this because the Bureau looks like idiots looking in the wrong building in the first place or because we are a convenient target to pick on when the shit hits the fan?"

"Both," Skinner said simply, not bothering to mince words. "This is politics, you both know this and this is going to get ugly quickly. The Bureau has been under added scrutiny since Ruby Ridge, Waco, and now Oklahoma City. This is only the latest in a long string of catastrophic blunders on this investigative body's part. The building that exploded may not have killed people, but it is a further embarrassment that the FBI doesn't need right now, not with Senate appropriations breathing down one side of the neck and a threat of hearings on the running of this place on the other. A lot of people's jobs will be at stake then, not just the two of yours."

"Pardon me if I'm not terribly concerned about the Director's fat ass being on the chopping block," Mulder snorted contemptuously, tossing the memo back on Skinner's desk with unrestrained disgust. "I don't recall this being all fun and games as I stood in a locked room watching a counter tick down."

"Mulder," Scully finally cut in, watching the scene escalate out of hand as Mulder's temper rose exponentially. She couldn't blame him for it. It was a punch to the gut to think that after doing everything she could to get people out of the building, to call in Michaud, to do everything she thought was right, she was being called up before OPR to answer for the FBI's embarrassment. She was too stunned to be livid like her partner, too hurt, too afraid. This wasn't right, but not for the reasons Mulder suspected.

Her singular utterance of his name at least stilled Mulder, if not calming him, and Skinner's glance flickered to her gratefully. "Look, I told you both as a courtesy, I didn't want you to be blind sided in there. The hearing is this afternoon. I'll be there, as will several other AD's. Be there and be on time and don't piss around with this, either of you. This is far too serious for that."

Translation, it could mean far worse than just a reprimand from OPR. With their track record it likely would mean far worse. After all, they had been suspended just weeks ago for the Gibson Praise matter, now they were being associated with a bomb threat gone horribly wrong. Scully could see the writing on the wall on this, even if Mulder at the moment could not. His anger and frustration was blinding him to what was really happening. They would use this situation to separate them at best, cut them off completely from any hope of access to the X-files at worst, even release them from the Bureau. They would conveniently take the fall for the mistakes of others. After all, who would really mind if Mr. and Mrs. Spooky got the axe?

"So, what time is our meeting with Torquemada again?" Mulder was nearly halfway out of his seat, clearly done with the conversation and wanting out. Did he even realize the seriousness of what was going on here?

"It's at three. Don't be late Mulder," Skinner admonished as Mulder rose without leave, stalking towards the outer office where Arlene sat. "These people aren't messing around, and they aren't nearly as understanding of you and your charms."

"I'll be on my best behavior," he tossed back without a backwards glance as he stalked out, leaving the quietly introspective Scully still sitting before her boss, thinking. Skinner watched the emptiness of Mulder's passage for long moments, troubled.

"Sir, how bad is this?" She was willing to broach the question Mulder in his temper had not. Her boss's dark eyes skimmed towards her, considering for careful moments.

"There is talk of permanent reassignment outside of Washington for one or both of you. Likely you, Mulder is too much of a live wire to handle in an outside office. He will likely be kept here, stuck in a dead end job without possibility of contacting you or getting his hands on the X-files. I imagine that will last just as long as it takes for Mulder to either get sick of it and leave or get himself fired. Their problem would be solved and everyone can go on back to the important business at hand."

Permanent reassignment? Where? Scully balked at the idea of it. Of course, when one served with the FBI you always expected to be sent wherever the Bureau wanted. Much like the military, you went where there was greatest demand for your services. But she had spent an entire childhood moving about thanks to her father's naval career, and Baltimore and Washington were the closest places she had to home. She would be far away from her mother anywhere else - and far away from Mulder. The latter was the part she couldn't stomach, leaving him behind, their work, everything they had put into it together. To be reassigned would be a travesty to all of that.

"Scully, I'll fight it if I can, but my hands are tied in this. Right now, I'm being blamed for giving you both too much free rein. If they reassign you, it won't be under me. I can't protect you two anymore. You see what I'm saying here?"

Scully did, sadly enough. Skinner, Mulder, herself, they were all being railroaded, punished for their indiscretion of putting the Bureau in a hard place. "Sir, I've given up eight years of my life to the Bureau. I left a medical career to come work here, and have done nothing but follow orders."

"And yet a case can be made, Scully, that you were sent to rein in Mulder, and there are some who would say you've done little of that. You were supposed to shut him down and instead he's only gotten worse."

"I see." She knew those opinions weren't those of Skinner, but it still cut deeply. She had been sent to shut him down. Instead she had given legitimacy to his work that allowed him to reach farther than he had before. Far from being the basement crank that the FBI was blissfully happy to ignore, she had given Mulder the ability to legitimize his work, and she was being punished for that, for wanting to find the truth.

"Sir, if they do reassign me. I can't stay here for this. I know too much, I have too many other skills I can use elsewhere to greater purpose than this." It became painfully clear what was going on here, and what she must do it if did. "I have risked everything for my country here, for a truth that I believed in completely. I can't just sit by and allow all that to come to nothing while I'm shoved aside as inconsequential. After everything I've seen, everything I've done, to work petty crimes in Des Moines wouldn't seem as worth the effort. We will be shut out completely, without a hope of getting the X-files back, and frankly, sir, I'm tired of being the FBI's whipping girl."

If her pronouncement surprised Skinner, he didn't show it. His jaw tightened as he nodded ever so slightly, frowning in obvious displeasure. "You know Mulder won't give up without a fight."

"Mulder has other resources beyond me." Diana Fowley, for example, who would be up and on her feet in a few months. She had ties to Mulder and an obvious interest in the work. Scully could see her as being a far superior advocate for him and his work than she personally was. "Five years, sir, my health, my sister, my daughter, and that's not counting the friends and acquaintances." 

Lest she forget Penny and Pendrell, she silently prayed. 

"Sir, I have seen too many things to be content pushing paper in a field office somewhere, waiting for my pension. And I have too many skills that I can take elsewhere and be appreciated for them. Mulder, should he choose to stay, would have plenty of other support elsewhere."

Frankly, Scully thought to herself, she would wish he would leave with her. The two could make a statement, perhaps go it alone researching the truth. They would be minus the resources, but much more free to do what they wished. She could strategically place herself in a lab somewhere that would allow her to assist, while he…

He would what? Mulder had spent years painstakingly building up the case load he had, digging through the FBI's most forgotten cases to find what he did. Without the FBI and its legitimacy his work would be taken even less seriously than it already was, his skills ignored as he was seen as nothing more than another Bigfoot-chasing freak. Mulder had talent well beyond hunting aliens, a scary talent that could turn the world upside down if he wished. She couldn't see him leaving the Bureau, nor must he. He had the ability to shine once again if he could get back into profiling. With Bill Patterson now in jail for his own crimes, there was nothing stopping Mulder from returning to his first love with the Bureau. And should Diana Fowley return and offer him assistance on his continuing quest, well then perhaps he could get farther than he could paling around with a forensic pathologist who didn't believe in little, gray men.

"Scully," Skinner's voice rumbled into her private contemplation, "I know this is all overwhelming, but wait till after the hearing to make any decisions. See what happens, think about it before you take steps that you can take back again."

Skinner's advice was right. She should at least wait long enough to see what sort of delightful punishment they had in store for the two of them. "I'll think about it, sir."

He nodded, running a tired hand over his balding head. He was invested in all of this too, and while he was in a much more secure position, it was by no means any easier. "If you can, get Mulder to this hearing on time. He's too pissed off now to understand the consequences of what is happening, if he messes this up…"

"I know sir, but I can only do so much where Mulder is concerned."

It was the story of their partnership. Scully could only do so much, go so far with him. And now she was starting to hit the real end of the line, not because of her own frustration or her health, but because of someone else. What would he say if she were to leave?

"I'll see you at three then, Agent Scully." Skinner dismissed her quietly. She could sense him watching her as she made it out of his office, past Arlene. The new secretary hardly smiled as she wandered past, hoping vaguely to still see Mulder outside, childishly glaring at the door, wondering where Scully was.

She wasn't exactly surprised to see him not there. "Did Agent Mulder mention where he was going?"

"He just walked out, Agent Scully. He didn't say."

Of course not, Mulder in high dungeon wouldn't, likely as not he was either at his desk pouting or off looking for some way of leveraging his way out of the situation he was in. "Thank you," she murmured, wandering away from Skinner's office, across the way to her own desk.

In the bullpen the hum of other agents dimmed as she stepped towards her workspace, replaced by vague murmurs and curious whispers. They likely had all heard about she and Mulder's role and Dallas. This coupled with whatever rumors had already been circulating, and Scully could imagine they were all dying to know what was going on with the two rogue agents and what sort of scandal would break around the pair now. Scully felt her shoulders tighten as she pulled herself straight, chin held high as she moved to her seat and settled, as if nothing in the world was wrong, which of course was a lie, everything was.

Without a word or look to anyone she booted up her computer and pulled up a Word document. As quickly and efficiently as possible she typed, her letter containing one line.

_Effective immediately, I hereby resign from my position with the Federal Bureau of Investigation._

The words blinked at her in stark black and white. She could print this and have it waiting for Skinner tonight after the hearing. But instead she clicked "save", the document remaining in its virtual state for now. Skinner was right, she should at least wait till after the hearing and the outcome to see if this was necessary. She should go out with her head held high, not fleeing the coming storm. That isn't what her father taught her to do, and it was the least she could do for Mulder for everything he had done for her, to go down with dignity, not as a coward.

"Agent Scully?" The blonde, pretty, ebullient Agent Miller crept up, a look of concern on her elfin face. Like some preternatural housemother, she seemed to sense something was up, her nervous eyes glancing towards Mulder's empty chair. "Everything okay with the two of you?"

Nosy she was, which was perhaps why it was she thought she could be an FBI agent, confusing that trait with a true investigative mind. "No, everything is fine. If you see Agent Mulder back at his desk, will you let me know?"

"Of course!" The woman fell over herself assuring Scully as she rose from her desk. Where she was going, she didn't know, anywhere but sitting in the bullpen, having everyone watch her as she prepared for her execution. She would go down with grace and dignity damn it, and not as the topic for further gossip, which was more than she could say for her partner at the moment.

Mulder, she sighed, as she stalked away from the prying eyes of the bullpen's staff. What in the world was he going to do without her?


	5. House of Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mulder shows up at Scully's door to beg her to come along.

The OPR hearing had gone exactly as she had feared.

Jana Cassidy's cutting words had burned like hot acid on her pride even as Scully met the woman's polite, methodical skepticism with cool obedience. The blame for Dallas officially would be placed on a lack of proper procedure and protocol. The outside world would only know that steps were being taken by the FBI to ensure that such lapses would not happen again, but internally, Scully and Mulder were to take the blame. Their lapse of judgment would be the scapegoat for what turned out to be ineptitude on the part of the FBI as a whole. It wasn't fair, but it was what it was, and there wasn't a damn thing Scully could do about it.

Remediation and reassignment, that was what they had told her would happen. Scully knew what that meant, her records would be officially marked with some sort of official setting down. She would be denied any chance to return to Quantico, as that would be too close to Washington for anyone's comfort. She would be then sent to general fieldwork somewhere in the US, perhaps in the Midwest where things stayed generally quiet. She would be lucky to see the light of day out there, doing the humdrum work of the FBI in low profile areas. Her career, once promising, would now be stunted, cut off at the root as she would wile away her time now officially behaving herself. Perhaps, if she was really good, they might let her cut up a body every so often for local law enforcement, just so she wouldn't feel her seven years of medical training had gone totally to waste.

It tore at her to know it had come down to this. Everything she had done, everything she had given for this organization and she was being humiliated in the end, without hope of finding any sort of justice or remuneration for the sins done to her. Worse, all the skills she had gained from years of work and education would be ignored, the bright mind and keen intellect she had in her own right squandered. That cut the worst. She had joined the FBI out of medical school with such high hopes. She had told her skeptical parents that it was out of duty, a way she could use her talents to serve her country and do what was right, to make a difference. Instead it had chewed her up and spit her out, tossing her aside without a care, all because she dared to try and do the right thing.

Worse though than OPR's admonishments, however, had been facing Mulder when she left that room. Like a whipped puppy, she had been sent out to fetch him where he sat with Skinner, still swearing defiance. The truth was, she realized as she walked over to meet him, was that they had already won. They had laid the trap carefully. First, Gibson Praise, then the burned X-files, now this, they had destroyed whatever chance Mulder had. If he were lucky he would, perhaps, get a shot at profiling again, but only after they had rubbed his nose in his own mess till he gagged from it. It killed her to see him, so determined to fight, knowing what was in store on the other side, worse though had been the moment when she told him what she was planning on doing.

Scully doubted that anything OPR could suggest doing to Mulder would match the heartbreaking hurt she saw in him the moment he realized she was quitting. It was worse than hurt, it was loss, betrayal, and the first real inkling of what was going on in there. She hated doing it, hated saying it to him. more than anything she wanted to promise him that she would stay with him through this, fight with him through this, prove to these bastards he was right and they were wrong. She loved him enough to want to do it, to stand by his side and fight the good fight. But she couldn't bring herself to say it. 

She watched as he wandered, forlorn, into the conference room, debating with herself if she should stay. In the end she had chosen to go, to leave him to fight his battle and to come find her when he was done. He knew where she would be. With heavy steps she moved to gather her things and go home. It was the only safe haven she had. Ironic, considering the many times she had faced her home being invaded by those out to hurt her. Despite the creeping feeling she still had when she walked past a ventilation duct and the place on her carpet where she swore she could still see Missy's blood, it was home. For all the badness that had occurred, it had been the only constant in her life. And so she retired there, hoping rather privately that Mulder would think to come find her there, so they could mutually try to comfort themselves. Perhaps, she privately hoped, he would try to convince her to stick it out. Perhaps, she might just let him do it and return.

She changed into comfortable pajamas and ordered Tony's, though she had no stomach for greasy pizza. She managed a slice while flipping through television channels, but left the rest untouched. Maybe Mulder would eat it if he came by, if he had any appetite. Scully glanced at her phone, expecting to hear from him, dying to know how things went for him on his end. She wanted to know and feared it. She didn't pick up her phone to call him, only waited.

Sometime after the eleven o'clock news she realized it was late. The pizza, long congealed, was safely stowed in her painfully neat kitchen, her coffee pot was set for her normal time in the morning, though the last thing Scully wanted to do was face the morning or the FBI. Her phone was still silent, her voice mail empty. There was no message from Mulder. Scully vaguely hoped he hadn't done something stupid.

Bed was comforting, but hardly restful. She lay between cool, clean sheets, staring at the red, glowing numbers as the flickered past midnight and beyond. Tomorrow she would have to make her decision to stay or go. There was no doubt in her mind they would send her someplace she didn't wish to be. Could she turn that letter in to Skinner, face his quiet disappointment from him and the silent plea for her to reconsider? Lord help her, she didn't think she could face Mulder. It would be the worst sort of betrayal to him, the one thing she never wanted to do. The last man on the planet she wanted to hurt, and she would be abandoning him in his fight. Could she bear to do it?

The knock sounded from her door, and even from the back of her apartment she could hear the thudding sound of it despite the lateness of the hour. Startled, Scully rose. She threw on her robe as the thumping continued, not urgent, but steady, and loud enough to wake her neighbors. Given all her experience with late night intrusions she gave half-a-thought to grabbing her weapon, but realized that no one who wished her harm would be so annoyingly obvious about it. Frankly, she could only think of one person, and she wasn't particularly surprised to see him swaying in front of her door.

"Awww…I woke you." Mulder slurred somewhat sheepishly, looking and smelling as if he had just crawled from the underside of a cheap, Tijuana cantina after an afternoon bender. The suit that had been neat at the hearing earlier was crumpled, his hair standing on greasy end as he blinked blearily at her in the wan light of her hallway. "Did I wake you?"

"No," she answered honestly, trying to remember the last time she ever saw Mulder drunk. It wasn't normally a Mulder thing to do.

"Why not? It's three in the morning."

She let him in, wrinkling her nose at the smell of cheap tequila. "Are you drunk, Mulder?"

"I…I was until about twenty minutes ago, yeah." He turned on her, surprisingly lucid despite his state.

"Was that before or after you decided to come here?" 

She earned a disgruntled from her partner.

"What exactly are you implying," he groused, as she waved his inebriated indignation aside.

"Go home, Mulder." She didn't want to talk to him in this state, not when he was drunk and possibly surly. She wanted him to be lucid and reasonable when explaining why she was abandoning him. Mulder drunk was an unpredictable variable she didn't want to deal with at three in the morning.

"No, get dressed, Scully." He waved her towards her room, looking as if he really, honestly expected her to do it.

"What are you doing," she asked first, knowing from far too much experience where this would lead and that was on the occasions when he was sober.

"Just get dressed, I'll explain on the way."

"Not before you tell me what we are doing at this ungodly hour when you are drunk and I haven't slept." She stood her ground, daring him to challenge her this. Whatever he said he was clearly under the influence of something still as he took a teetering step back.

"Why do you always have to be so difficult?"

"Because you usually like doing things this time of night that land us in jail. We are in enough trouble, Mulder, I don't want to make it worse for ourselves."

"How can it be any worse? They are separating us, ruining us, we might as well go out with a bang, right?" He settled heavily on the arm of her couch, looking up at her with begging. "Scully, I can't just let it all end like this. Ask yourself. Can you?"

End with the whimper they were facing now? End with humiliation, without an explanation as to whom or why, without a single answer to give reason to the last five years? No, she couldn't. And he knew she couldn't. It was why he came here, banking on that.

"What have you got," she crossed her arms tightly over her pajamas, settling herself in her armchair.

"I met a man tonight, calls himself Alvin Kurtweil. Says he knew my Dad back in the day at the State Department."

"And why is he bothering you on a random night in a DC watering hole?" Scully was curious to see if that thought had crossed Mulder's tequila-soaked brain.

"He heard about the whole excursion to Dallas and he pointed out something that wasn't brought up in our show trial earlier today."

"What?"

"The bodies they claimed they found, they were already dead." Mulder leaned forward, eyes level with her own. "I wonder, if we got a chance to take a look at those bodies, if we would find evidence of death before the bomb blast or because of it."

"Dead? Why?"

"FEMA had an office there, a quarantine facility."

"So this Kurtzweil believes that there were bodies in quarantine there that the US government is trying to hide by sticking an enormous bomb in an entire building in order to blow it up."

"Got to admit, no one would think anything was wrong with them."

"Mulder, I don't know if it is the booze that is making you buy this pile of crap or if this Kurtzweil is just that persuasive of a character. How in the hell do you think we can get access to these bodies?"

"They are being held as evidence at Bethesda right now. I called around on my way over here. If we leave now, we can be in and out before the day shift arrives and does anything with them."

"Bodies? Mulder, it is Bethesda, that is an Army facility. We can't get in there without proper access."

"Yeah, funny how that works. FBI investigation and the bodies are sent to Bethesda and not Quantico?" One dark eyebrow raised in mock challenge. "Makes you sort of wonder what FEMA has to hide."

It admittedly did make Scully wonder. This was insanity. This was craziness. They were already facing censure and worse, and now Mulder wanted to infiltrate an Army facility to look at these bodies. What was left of Scully's career flashed briefly before her eyes.

"What do we have to lose, Scully? We can't let them end it like this?"

No, she realized, they couldn't. "Alright, but I'm driving. You are going to go in the kitchen and make a cup of coffee and sober up. The coffee maker is ready, just hit on." She rose, sweeping past him towards her room. "I hope you have a plan for getting us into a highly guarded facility without clearance to look at these bodies."

"I think I'm working up an idea," he warbled as he slowly stood up, eyes to the kitchen.

"One that won't get us arrested," she breathed, closing her bedroom door.


	6. A Viral Infection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully discovers something frightening about the corpses in Dallas.

Whatever happened to this man, it had nothing to do with the explosion in Dallas.

Her resources were limited in the cold sterility of the morgue she was using. She had scrounged a gown to cover her clothes and a mask and safety glasses to cover her face. She had even managed to find a set of tools without alerting anyone to her presence and had set to her work as quickly as possible. She could almost feel the fingers of sunlight outside the concrete walls she was hidden in and knew that soon someone would catch on that she was there when she wasn't supposed to be there.

She wished Mulder hadn't left her alone, but in a way she was glad he did. At the best of times he wasn't good with her autopsies and this quite possibly would have blown even his accepting mind. Just her cursory glance at the body had told her this wasn't right. If this had been a real victim of the blast an autopsy would have been done to confirm it. The best she could tell none had, no Y-incision marked the chest. Worse was the condition the body was in, almost an advanced state of decomposition, but from an agent that Scully had never seen before. The body was collecting a thick, gelatinous substance that seemed to be advancing the decay process much farther than it should have been for only a few days. No paperwork was included with the body. Scully had no way of knowing why this man had been in FEMA quarantine or what he had been exposed to. Whatever it was, it was no infection she had ever seen before.

Her thoughts raced as she worked, beginning the incision, cutting quickly and efficiently in the limited time she knew she had. The skin gave easily under blade, like gelatin, slipping under her fingers as began to open up the man's chest and abdominal cavities. It was unnerving to see that sort of texture to human skin, but worse was when she finally opened up the muscles just below. Her scalpel was practically useless, her gloved fingers managed to tear through the protective abdominal wall, as easily as if it were paper.

"Oh my God," she breathed, as she stared into the man's innards and realized something was horribly, horribly wrong.

Whatever it was that had happened to this man, it was a massive infection of an extremely virulent nature, fast acting, and deadly. Most of the victim's major organs were liquefied into a dark sludge, one that permeated not just the man's stomach, but seemed to run through his vascular system. Perhaps it was how the infection spread? Only his lungs and heart seemed to remain intact, indicating that he had been still alive, in theory, though Scully couldn't imagine he had been functioning. What could cause such a total cellular failure of organs like this?

She was no expert in infectious disease, but her mind raced immediately to hemorrhagic viruses; the Hanta virus, Ebola, and Marburg virus. Extremely lethal and quite infectious, they would immediately explain why the bodies were in FEMA quarantine. But nothing Scully knew about the diseases spoke to this sort of level of cellular destruction. They literally caused the bodies to bleed to death, the cellular structure of the blood and capillaries failed, till the victims literally bled themselves to death. It could also explain the black, ichorous nature of the fluid build up, dead blood running through the man's veins.

Except she had never heard of those diseases causing quite the level of damage going on here, the destructive nature of what she was witnessing was unparalleled. His entire body seemed made of spun glass somehow, the skin taking on a translucent quality that was frightening. His muscles became clear and jelly, as if every fiber of cellular make up was taken, leaving only the collagen behind. Even his bones appeared brittle, suddenly flexible and as pliable as plastic. Curious, she ran her fingers along the row of rib bones, giving even under her slight pressure. She reached for the bone cutters, a massive tool that could clip off tree branches as easily as snap through smaller human bones. Easily she snipped off a section, almost as if it were made of plastic rather than bone, and held it up to the only light she had. Bone had the tensile density of steel, even in death. This section she held up was leached of any of that. What should have been milky calcium white was as clear as glass, glistening and porous. What in the world was going on here? And why in the world did they destroy a whole building to cover it up?

Outside of the autopsy bay she heard movement and voices. Damn it! The fix was in and she was caught in the middle of it. More quickly than she thought possible she reached for the drop sheet she had taken off the body, tossing it over her work and wheeling it innocuously in place in the refrigerator room. Would they even think to check there? She hoped not. If the dead easily spooked them, they might not. Except, they were military. How spooked by the dead could they be?

Outside the thick steel and concrete, Scully could hear the harsh voices of military police. Her heart thumped as she frantically glanced around the confined space, trying to figure out where to hide herself. A refrigeration drawer wouldn't do, she would have to get back out. The shriek of her cell phone nearly made her heart jump out of her throat. The sound reverberated off the walls, and she was sure it was loud and clear in the main room beyond. Resisting the urge to scream, she pulled it out, punching the button frantically just to shut it up. No need to look at the ID on the front to tell her who was foolish enough to call her. She could hear Mulder's gravelly monotone loud and clear even before she got it up to her ear.

"Scully, it's me."

"Yeah," she muttered, as steps sounded on the pavement just outside the door. Her eyes locked on the handle, willing it not to turn.

"Why are you whispering?"

Scully wanted to scream at the moment and yell at him that he was an idiot, this was his fault, and if she had to be freed from jail, she was blaming him. "Mulder, I really can't talk right now."

He clearly didn't pick up the hint. "What did you find?"

Her eyes flickered to the body, haphazardly covered. "Evidence of a massive infection."

"What kind of infection."

Jesus, Mulder! This was not the time for a full pathological dissertation. "I don't know." 

She would need blood work, tests, the types of things that would draw some attention. And it was the last thing she wanted when she was trespassing on military property.

The danger of her situation was lost on him. "All right, listen to me, I'm going home and then I'm booking myself on a flight to Dallas. I'm going to get you a ticket, too."

What? Was he insane? They had no time for this! "Mulder…"

"I need you there with me," he insisted, his sights having narrowed to what he wanted. "I need your expertise."

"Mulder, I have a hearing tomorrow." Had he forgotten that little aspect in his drunken stupor?

"I can get you back in time for that hearing, maybe with evidence that will blow it away."

Dear God, what was he thinking "Mulder, I can't. I'm way past the point of common sense here."

Before he could reply the handle to the door turned.

Whatever Mulder said in response, she cut it off, spinning in place as she willed an idea to come to her. Her eyes landed on the space under the medical trolley with the body she had worked on. She was just small enough to fit there without anyone thinking to find her there. Scrambling on hands and knees, she slid under, just as the door opened wide and heavy boots echoed off the solid, concrete floor.

Scully had never been more grateful for her slight height and petite frame. She held her breath as she watched the shiny, black leather walk past, stop for the briefest of moments, and pivot away from her, seemingly none the wiser for her existence there. Her heard pounded so loudly in her ears it was a wonder that they didn't hear it.

"They must have already left the premises," one voice said, as Scully's eyes flickered towards the door where two other sets of boots waited patiently, less willingly to wander in it seemed.

"Do we have their description?"

"Yeah, a short red headed woman and a tall, brunette male. They looked official enough."

"We don't know what they were up to. Send out a general warning through security, see if they pick them up anywhere." This was presumably one of the men at the door, who shifted uneasily, perhaps with some impatience. "What do you say? Let's get the hell out of here. The bodies give me the creeps."

"Right!" The boots in the room replied, pacing slowly past Scully again, but without stopping. She nearly cried with relief the minute the door closed. She waited for another five minutes, just to ensure that they had well and gone before scooting out from under the trolley, careful to avoid whatever viscous fluid had dripped down from the body as she lay under it. Did she even want to know what it was that had caused the body to drip like that? Even if it could help her case tomorrow, was it worth potentially being caught and jailed? Whatever was wrong with this poor man, she had all the information she could gather without a proper lab to run tests and blood work. She needed out of here, and she needed to get back to DC. Maybe she could talk Mulder out of this preposterous idea.

How could she get out of this facility? They were looking for her at least, a woman in a dark suit and bright red hair. She would be obvious even to the most casual observer. She tugged at her now dusty clothes, pulling at the surgical mask still around her neck. A slow smile spread on her face as an idea occurred to her.

Five minutes later, she wheeled an empty trolley down the hallway, eyes averted from the occasional passer by that wandered past her. Her dark clothes were covered with a surgical smock, her bright hair tucked neatly under a cap. To the casual observer, she was just another pathologist making her way around a facility that had several pathologists. No one seemed any the wiser as she made her way to the intake station, nodding at the receptionist on duty, and wandering to the back door.

Scully didn't think she breathed again until she had safely stashed the purloined scrubs and dashed to what looked like the general employee parking, all the while eyes searching for the likes of military police. None appeared as she casually wandered through the cars. Hers was in visitor parking, just where she left it, which begged the question of how Mulder got back to DC, and just how much he was racking up in cab fair this day?

She started her car, praying that the man keeping vigilance at the gate would pay her no mind as she pulled up to the checkpoint. Her luck, with so many cars wandering in for the day, no one paid attention as she slipped out. Within seconds she was lost in traffic, no one following her as she made her way towards Washington, eyes on the road behind her.

She considered Mulder and his flight. How could he do this to her like this yet again? A year spent ignoring anything that bespoke to any of their work and only when it is all completely lost to them does he get a fire under his ass to do something. And once again, it was at the cost of her livelihood and well-being, without a thought as to the danger they were both sitting in right at this moment. Did he really, blithely believe that they could solve all their problems overnight by this venture? Did she honestly believe she would go with him on this? That realization sunk through the fear and righteous indignation like a lead weight. Whatever she might be feeling, no matter how insane this all might be, Scully knew that when push came to shove she would be there with Mulder. In the end he was right, after everything they had done and gone through, could she really walk away from all of this without at least leaving it all on the table and trying to uncover every stone, every possibility?

The palm of her hand slammed into the steering wheel in frustration as she glared at herself in the rearview window. One day soon she would have to say no, she would have to stop this reckless pursuit after Mulder and his causes. That day would be sooner than she would like to think. Till then, she would follow him on this. This could very well be the key to everything, to explaining Dallas, who was behind it, and why they weren't at fault. Perhaps it would be the key to getting the X-files back.

It could also be another wild goose chase that would just make everything worse.


	7. God Bless Texas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully finds herself in Texas, again.

Scully could now understand the point behind the phrase, "God Bless Texas." She now knew it wasn't a statement; it was a prayer. She had never seen a more God-forsaken country than the one she stared at outside of their rented sedan window. Dry grass and tumbleweeds spread out as far as the eye could see under a silvery-blue sky, the wide-open space disconcertingly open to her city girl eyes. As far as the eye could see across the horizon nothing existed, certainly not a hidden base, or secret testing facility, or anything else that could vaguely be assumed to be Mulder's "evidence". Not that her partner seemed to notice this fact as he squinted into the slowly lowering sun, nor did he seem to be paying attention to the clock on the dashboard that was already inching toward six o'clock, hundreds of miles away from any area of civilization that could boast an airport large enough to get a flight back to DC in a timely enough fashion to make her meeting the next morning. His eyes scanned the horizon restlessly. The silence between them in the artificially cooled car occasionally punctuated by the cracking of his ever-present sunflower seeds. A slow pile of the spent shells was growing in the console between them.

And still they drove westward, with no end to the ribbon of silver in front of them in sight.

"Mulder," she finally sighed, hating to bring up the obvious for what felt like the hundredth time. "I have no idea where we are, but I have to be in DC tomorrow."

"I know," he replied simply, eyes not shifting from the road ahead.

Her temper simmered, but she swallowed it, ignoring the burn that settled somewhere in her belly. For Mulder, this was it, the last ditch effort to prove that none of this had been in vain. Even he realized, didn't he, how futile that even this was? Even if they could prove the bodies in Dallas had been deliberately killed to hide a virus, they had no way of proving that the virus was engineered by their government, nor for what purpose. All they would have is another implausible story, another half-crazed tale spun by Fox Mulder.

Yet, Scully didn't quite have the heart to cut off even this thread of hope, even if her meeting was in fifteen hours and she was on the other side of the country in the middle of nowhere.

"Do you really mean to do it?" Mulder's low murmur cut into her drifting thoughts, yanking them from the scrubby landscape she stared at and threw them back into the moment.

"What choice will I have?" She sounded so practical as she said it, so clinical, as if this was only common sense, as if anything about the X-files was ever common sense.

"You have a choice to stay, to see this out? If anything Kurtzweil is telling us is true…"

"And how will prove it, Mulder? And even if we do prove it, what do we do with it, and who will care?"

"I thought you were in this for the truth?"

"I was in this for the truth, yes, but also for justice." The word tasted bitter in her mouth now as she thought of the disapproving frown of AD Cassidy, the doubt and dismissiveness that exuded from the woman. She had wanted to yell at her, to tell her that none of this was crazy, but had felt herself deflate under the weight of knowledge it would do her no good.

"Mulder, we both got into this for so many reasons. We both had our truths, but now I have to ask myself if it is truth I'm after so much anymore, or is it really justice? And perhaps I need to be honest with myself. I may never find justice for Melissa or for Emily. I may never find it for myself. If these are men who can, at their own personal whim, play with the lives of thousands without a concern of what it does to them, what hope do I have at ever making them pay for the crimes they did against me alone."

"Scully, if you think like that…"

"What? They win?" She snorted, slumping further into the seat, her suit rumpling up behind her. "They have already won. I can't force you to not stop fighting, but at some point I have to weigh the effort against the cost, and it's already cost me much."

"It's because it has cost you so much I would have thought you would fight this to the bitter end." He sounded as if she was betraying him - or perhaps she just felt like she was. She sighed, twisting her mouth as she stared back out of the window to the dusty landscape.

"Perhaps I would keep fighting if I felt we weren't going to be just pushed down further and further. They aren't talking about sending me to Quantico this time. They don't want me near you. They don't want me contacting you. What good am I if I'm stuck in Boise?"

"I hear Idaho has great potatoes?" His joke fell flat between them. "Scully, the reason they want to send you so far away is because you are so effective. You know that, right?"

"But there are others who support your cause, Mulder." She didn't drop Diana Fowley's name, but she knew he understood whom she meant. "People who have a lot more sway and credibility at the moment than I do."

"No one with your scientific background."

"No, but you can find plenty of people with a scientific background to pester if you needed. It's not like my skills are that unusual."

"But your willingness to listen to me is." His fingers wrapped hard around the steering wheel, though he didn't look away from the straight line they were speeding towards. "Don't think for a moment I don't value that, Scully."

Despite herself, his declaration brought a smile to her lips, a rarely paid compliment that a part of her relished to hear. But it also cut at the already gnawing sense of defeat that was eating at her and the whispers of her heart that told her not to do this. At another time and place, a compliment like that would have melted her reserve enough to at least earn her grudging temporary compliance. But now, for all that had passed between them, for all of her own feelings for this man, however complicated they might be, she couldn't do it this time.

"How is Diana, by the way?" The abruptness of the topic switch was on purpose and she knew he would realize that. It felt strange, calling her by her given name, so personal, when Scully barely knew the woman. It just felt too odd to call her anything else, knowing that there was some past, still unexplained, between Mulder and this woman.

"I don't know. I haven't spoken to her." He frowned absently ahead. Whether it was because Scully had evaded his argument or because of the topic, she didn't knowl. "In case you couldn't tell, this week hasn't exactly given me a ton of free time to check in."

A dark part that Scully hated acknowledging was secretly pleased to hear that. "She said the two of you used to work together before the X-files, working on paranormal research."

"Something like that." He was dancing around the subject once again. What about this woman made him so very nervous to disclose her? "Scully, look, whatever is out there, this changes everything. All that we've ever discovered the last five years, everything that Kirtschgau told us, all the work on the virus, this could be the evidence we've always needed. And if we find it, I will need you more than ever. They'll have to listen to us then."

"Do you really believe that?" She turned to stare at his profile in the early evening sunlight. After every roadblock thrown up in their path these last five years, did he really think that it would go that simply?

"Would I drag you out to the middle of Nowhere, Texas hours before the biggest meeting of your career if I wasn't certain of it?"

Scully blinked quietly at him and turned, silent, to face the road in front of him. She didn't have the heart to give him the answer that hung on her lips.


	8. Listening and Hearing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully makes the decision to walk away.

Damn Texas and damn Fox Mulder!

Scully's car crawled through DC traffic so thick she could cut it with a knife, stalling her miles from her pending meeting. The clock on her dash told her she had twenty minutes till the hearing that would decide her fate with the FBI, with the X-files, and with Mulder, and she was caught in the worst of traffic, unable even to reach her apartment in any vague hope of making herself look presentable. She was afraid to even look at a mirror. She'd snagged a view of herself in the reflection off the windows at National, her hair tangled and windblown with fragments of corn silk hanging crazily in the copper locks, her face covered in dirt and minute cuts from the tall corn stalks. Her suit looked as if she had been crawling around through morgues and cornfields for the last twenty-four plus hours, not to mention being stuck in airplanes and rental cars, rumpling in the closed, confined spaces. Now she was going to present herself before the Office of Professional Responsibility and the other Assistant Directors and tell them that there were in fact secret experiments being conducted in a corn field that shouldn't exist in the Texas desert, involving bees and corn, and God knows what else. Scully wasn't even sure she understood it all.

Not that this wouldn't be a hard sell at all….

She had toyed with the idea of calling Skinner, of begging off because of a family emergency, throw out a large, horrible sounding medical condition that may or may not be effecting her mother, and reschedule this whole affair when she had time to analyze what they had found, to properly present to AD Cassidy and the review board just what she and Mulder had dug up and what it all meant. She doubted that sort of excuse would fly well, but it would likely pass better than the truth would. Somehow she doubted that they would be as sympathetic if she had told them that she and Mulder had stumbled into El Paso sometime around 1 AM, looking as if they had just both walked from the nearest farm, smelling faintly of fertilizer and dirt. Mulder had said nothing as he quietly booked the passage on a red eye flight to Chicago, and from there, a shuttle straight to DC that landed at 8:30.

"That should get you in there in time," he offered, looking guilty as he picked corn pollen off the shoulder of her dark, suit jacket.

"I have no time to clean up," she shot back wearily, collapsing in a vinyl chair and staring blankly at the darkness beyond the windows. "Mulder, what do I even tell them about what we saw."

"Tell them the truth," he replied with all the reverent faith of someone who held "truth" as a holy word.

"The truth? What is that? We don't know what is going on out there?"

"You saw the evidence yourself in that body this morning, evidence of a massive infection. Kurtzweil said that FEMA was calling it the Hanta Virus. We followed the trail and it led us to some secret dig sight that FEMA felt the need to quarantine off, and some haphazard playground stuck on top of it. All the locals can tell us is that they were told to keep it secret, and that big, shiny trucks took everything in the direction of a secret, desert facility and a corn patch in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by industrial bee hives. While that might be innocuous in and of itself in Texas, the whole facility was guarded by military helicopters out to shoot our ass for no particular reason at all."

"Well, when you put it all that way, Mulder, of course it sounds perfectly rational and reasonable," Scully yawned, the lack of sleep in the last forty-eight hours finally catching up to her. "That's exactly what I will tell them and hope they don't laugh away my last shred of credibility."

"Think about it, Scully, everything we've worked on for the last five years comes down to this!" Mulder flopped beside her, hardly looking worn by their day's excursions, eyes feverish in the harsh, florescent lights. "We've known from the beginning that these men my father was working with have been engineering a virus. We keep stumbling over evidence of it over and over, Purity Control. We know that they've been creating it and testing it on humans for years, even you. Kirtschgau told us those experiments were being run during the Cold War. What if they never stopped? What if they have no intention of stopping them?"

"Mulder, we've never put together the whole story of any of that. Everything was circumstantial at best, and the evidence we did have was in the X-files, the ones that were all burned." She cringed as she thought of all the scientific proof she had collected over the years, Purity control and the virus that she and Pendrell had found in the poor, dead geologist, the vaccination logs from the mine in West Virginia, and the leprosy colony where all the innocent people had been taken and experimented on. All of that was gone now and could hardly be conjured up in a few hours time for her meeting.

"You know it and you can convince them, I know you can! You always were the rational one, you'll make them see reason." Mulder had such utter confidence in her. It had almost broken her heart. Now as she fought through morning traffic, she wondered just how much of it was misplaced. Did he really believe she would be able to rescue them both from what was beginning to look like their inevitable fate?

It was twenty minutes past the hour by the time she pulled into a parking spot and it took another fifteen to get through the large complex that was the Justice Department to find her meeting. She furiously tugged at her rumpled jacket, trying guiltily not to meet Skinner's eyes as she spied him flaring at her from down the hallway. He stood, hands on hips in a manner that reminded her absurdly of her high school principle as she paused long enough to rub at a dirt smudge on one cheek, wishing she had at least had time for a shower and change of clothes.

Skinner shook his head and entered first, announcing her as she rushed inside, apologies already on her tongue. But it was AD Cassidy who beat her to the punch, eyeing her watch disapprovingly from down her aristocratic nose. "Special Agent Scully?"

"Yes, I apologize for making you wait," she rushed, feeling her chapped and scratched cheeks blush. "I have new evidence."

The panel rustled. Cassidy arched one perfect eyebrow up at her in surprise. "Evidence of what?"

If only she knew. Fingers trembling, she reached in her briefcase, pulling out the small baggie she had collected from the Dallas office, her mind frantically trying to put some believable story together for Cassidy and OPR. "These are fossilized bone fragments that I was able to study, that were gathered at the bomb site in Dallas."

"You've been back to Dallas?" Cassidy's silvery-blonde eyebrows rose with her voice, disapproval evident as she frowned at the baggy in Scully's fingers.

"Yes," Scully replied, nervously meeting the equally skeptical gazes of the other panel members. "These fossils were being kept in the building that was blown up, they were from a sight just west of Dallas where the five bodies found at the bomb sight were from."

Cassidy's mouth pursed tightly. "Just what are you suggesting, Agent Scully."

Scully swallowed, her mouth dry as her chapped lips pressed hard together. "I had a chance to examine one of the bodies from the bomb sight yesterday. The man who was found dead there did not die from the bomb blast itself, or from the debris that ensued. I found evidence of a massive infection, possibly a hemorrhagic one, that likely killed the man even before the bomb went off."

That got the panels attention. Uniformly they stared at Scully, blinking silently, even Skinner, as she continued with a hint more confidence. "I had no chance to examine the other bodies, but I would surmise that since they were part of a FEMA quarantine, they too had been infected."

"I fail to see what this has to do with anything, Agent Scully," Cassidy snapped, but Scully pressed on before she could allow the other woman to gain control of the conversation again.

"The bodies were found at the same spot these fossilized bones were. The bones display the same sort of symptoms the bodies did, possibly whatever infected the new bodies was old; something that had infected these bones a hundred,even a thousand years ago. It isn't uncommon for old disease, long since thought to be eradicated, to come into contact with a human populace again at the sight of ancient burial grounds or cemeteries, particularly with certain forms of viruses."

"Your point?" Cassidy's patience clearly Had worn thin.

"My point is that these bodies didn't die because of a bomb. They were dead because of a disease, one that FEMA wanted to keep secret before word got out about its effects and how truly dangerous it was."

"A conspiracy?" Cassidy leaned back in her chair, looking surprised that such ideas would come out of Dana Scully, medical doctor. "Why would they want to keep a deadly disease quiet when obviously there were witnesses to it?"

"Because we have been engineering and playing with the same disease for years." Scully's eyes flickered knowingly to Skinner. "Because it is an old virus that has been used in bio-weapons development by our government. But this was something different, perhaps an old variant accidentally stumbled upon, one they couldn't account for. It was better to destroy it completely than to hazard the unknown factor getting out there. Hence why the bodies were left in a building that was going to be blown up."

Scully might as well have dropped the word "aliens" in the conversation, because it was clear that all of this was about as likely to Cassidy and her way of thinking as if Scully had said little green men were involved. "And you mean to tell me that hundreds of lives were put at risk just to destroy the evidence of a rogue strain of a disease you accuse our government of developing for its own purposes."

"Essentially," Scully found herself faltering slightly, clearing her throat as her grip on the fossils tightened. "As I said, whatever was found in Blackwood was likely a native, natural strain, perhaps one that had evolved over time and was twice as dangerous as whatever the government was developing. It was better to destroy much of it, to control what they had. But they couldn't simply destroy the bodies. There were families who wanted explanations, ones they couldn't give. It is easier to pretend they died at the hands of a horrible accident than to admit they were destroyed because of a deadly strain of a bioengineered disease."

Even as she said it, Scully know it sounded mad, crazy even. This should be something coming out of the mouth of Fox Mulder, not his rational, scientific partner. And yet, would they listen to it any better out of him. He'd have been dismissed by now as a raving lunatic. She wasn't so sure she wasn't being dismissed herself. She lifted her chin and continued. "I think there is reason to believe that the bomb that was set off in Dallas was deliberately planted there to hide evidence of what was going on. And I also have reason to believe that there may have been some involvement by Special Agent-in-Charge Michaud."

She was calling out one of their own and the silence that permeated the room after her words left the air ringing. Scully felt her heart flutter to her throat as she met Cassidy's eyes, refusing to flinch at the shock and doubt she saw there. She was taking the biggest gamble of her life, saying the things she said now, and she wasn't even particularly sure half of them were even true or right. She was working off gut instinct here, something she wasn't good with, ever. And she hoped to God she was right in this.

"Those are very serious allegations, Agent Scully," Cassidy warned softly.

"Yes, I know," she replied, knowing what Cassidy wasn't saying out loud. They were career-ending allegations, ones that if not taken seriously would end whatever hope Scully had for a stellar future with the Bureau. Her stomach knotted sickeningly as she felt her shoulders fall just a fraction of an inch.

"You have conclusive evidence of this, something that ties these claims of yours to the crime?"

Here Scully faltered. She had Scully there, and Cassidy knew it. "Not completely," Scully stuttered, her steady gaze now fluttering to her fingers folded in front of her. "I hope to, but we are in the process of…we are working towards gathering that evidence."

"Working with?" Cassidy hardly needed to ask, everyone knew. She wanted Scully to admit it.

"With…Agent Mulder."

Cassidy nodded slowly, clearly unimpressed by her response. "You are both the subject of an OPR investigation and you went with him to collect evidence to prove your innocence?"

"Because we are innocent," Scully shot back, for the first time cracking under the stress, the lack of sleep over the past days, the exhaustion, the fear and the worry getting to her finally. "Because the two of us are convenient scapegoats to cover a truth that no one else wants to deal with." She didn't care if she sounded like Mulder at the moment, if they wondered just what sort of effect her proximity to him had on her reason and sense. "Why would a bomb be put in the wrong building and allowed to go off by a man who was an expert at diffusing these, without him demanding a bomb squad or any other protocol that are required?"

Her point clearly got across to several of the panels members as they glanced pointedly from one to the other. But Cassidy seemed unconvinced. "Agent Scully, I understand the position this puts you and Agent Mulder in. But you both broke protocol in leaving Agent Michaud. You did not keep in keep in contact with the SAIC, and because of it lives were lost, even minimally. Now you come in here, spouting crazy theories about the reasons for the bomb being there in the first place involving secretly engineered viruses, and then besmirch the name of a man who is not here to defend himself? While this is something that I expected completely to hear out of the mouth of Agent Mulder, I am surprised that this sort of accusation coming from you, Agent Scully. One would have expected something…better."

Cassidy's works stung, as if she had slapped Scully's already cut and chapped cheek. More had been expected out of her, rational and been expected out of her. Diseases and conspiracies had not been expected out of her. She had failed. That was the point of this meeting, of calling her before OPR to be humiliated. She had failed in the duty assigned to her by Section Chief Blevins years ago, to rein Mulder in, to shut him down. This was now her punishment.

"I am sorry, Agent Scully, that you felt the need to rush to Dallas to try and make a case for yourself, but the truth is this panel has already decided on disciplinary actions, ones which I'm afraid are unchanged in the light of your new…evidence." Cassidy delicately danced around the last word as if loath to admit that it was anything of the sort. "From your files it appears you are a very talented forensic pathologist. Your services can be used in the Salt Lake City field office, where you will be transferred immediately."

Utah? Scully blinked, almost uncomprehendingly, at the papers in Cassidy's hand. She was being sent to Utah, far away from DC, her family, from Mulder. Her eyes began to sting as she fought to keep her calm, listening to Cassidy's ruling. There was nothing she could do to stop this, to fight this…this was it.

"You are to have no further contact with Agent Mulder. Should you be seen aiding him in any capacity in the future, your employment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be terminated. Considering the number of times you have both been given leeway by members of this board on numerous occasions, consider this your final warning. You are not to contact Agent Mulder in any way, nor to help him in his work or on any further case."

No contact….none. They were separating her from Mulder, cutting her off. Did they really think that this would work, that he would just blithely go for this? "I…I see."

Something akin to sympathy briefly played across Cassidy's stern features. "Agent Scully, I realize that you have devoted yourself to Agent Mulder's work. You did not ask to be assigned to it, but you have risked a great deal for it. But considering recent circumstances with the boy, Gibson Praise, and now this, perhaps you can consider this a fresh start for your career. You are a good agent. AD Skinner speaks highly of you. If given a few years in Salt Lake City your performance excels, perhaps OPR and the AD's can reconsider these measures."

In other words, if she was good, they would let her come home to play again, perhaps in Quantico. The idea tasted bitter as images of Melissa and Emily came to mind. Their justice, their truth was now sacrificed on the altar of expected, good behavior, their deaths ignored because it was too uncomfortable to think about. The FBI didn't wan to deal with conspiracies and theories, of why it was a bomb really went off in Dallas. They wanted to close this up, pretend it didn't happen, to ignore the truth for the convenient lie. Scully was their sacrifice for that.

"Do you have anything further you wish to say?" Cassidy at least gave Scully the dignity of a response. But for the moment Scully found she had none. What could one say when their career, the one they had stood up to their family for, was not turned to ashes and dust.

"Then I believe this meeting is adjourned." Cassidy spoke dismissively as everyone began to rustle. Everyone, save Scully. She sat still, barely looking up as people filed out. Cassidy hustled outside without giving Scully a second glance. Only one person remained, and he sat, grim faced as he studied her.

When the room cleared completely, only then did Skinner speak. "Scully - Dana - I don't know what to say."

She tried to shrug, to let him know it was okay, but couldn't manage even the slight lift of her shoulders. She stared quietly at the baggie in front of her, the one that Mulder had been so certain would save the day. He had faith in her to make this happen. She had failed him. He had wanted her to make their case and she couldn't even make Cassidy believe her.

"Look, two years in Salt Lake, tops," Skinner continued, as if he had any hope of making this better. "I can petition for your return here then. There's always Quantico,. They would be happy to have you back!"

"Sir," Scully cut him off, not wanting to hear the appeasement. It was done. And her mind was already made up. "When I return to my desk to pack my things, I will send you my letter of resignation."

Skinner paused, taken aback. She had warned him about this. Had he not considered she would really go through with it?

"The letter was written the other day, you had just suggested I wait till after the hearing. Now it is over, with the outcome I feared." Scully reached for the bone fragments in front of her, her fingers wrapping around the brittle shards. "I have nothing else left but to pack my things and get out of here."

"Scully, you are too good of an agent not to go down without a fight," Skinner admonished, vehement suddenly in the face of her calm acceptance. "All this work…you are willing to let this go?"

"Sir, all due respect, I have fought and fought some more. I've given up everything. Now this." Scully quietly deposited the baggie into her briefcase, noticing the smudge of West Texas dirt on her pale hand. "I'm done."

"Is that what you plan to tell Mulder then?" Skinner's challenge hit home. He was trying to guilt her into reconsidering.

"I told Mulder l was planning on it." Though she knew he still didn't believe she would go through with it. The man of consummate faith not believing her in this one thing. She almost laughed at the idea.

"And you are willing to walk away from all of this?"

"Walk away from what, sir?" Scully slammed her briefcase a little too hard as she looked up at him, her even demeanor finally breaking. "The X-files are closed. We are reassigned, losing years of work. They don't want us here and they certainly don't want us working together. This was what they wanted from the start, Mulder and I discredited, unable to work together. Can you deny that?"

Skinner fell silent under her accusations. Scully sighed, picking up her briefcase. It felt like lead in her fingers, dragging her down.

"It's easier for them to have me take the bullet than Mulder. He's too much of a live wire for them to want to deal with."

"Is that how you tell yourself that any of this is all right? Martyr yourself on Mulder's cause?"

The cross at her throat jumped slightly at the half hysteric giggle she just managed to swallow at the thought. "If I was martyring myself, sir, I'd take this without question and move to Salt Lake. Instead I'm quitting. I'm taking back my life, the life that this Bureau stole from me five years ago."

"And what about Mulder?"

"Whatever decisions he makes regarding the FBI and his work are his own." She sounded so indifferent saying that when in truth she felt anything but. Did he think this was easy for her? Did he think she wanted to leave him? Leaving Mulder cut at her so deeply. Even the idea of telling him ate at her. How could she walk away from this, from him? What would he do without her? Perhaps more than that, what would she do without him?

"You know you don't believe that, Scully." Skinner rose, hands at his hips as she gathered herself together. "This isn't about just him anymore, it hasn't been for a long time."

"I know. But he worked for a long time before I came around."

"And the minute you were taken he barely made it, Scully, I saw him when you disappeared, and again when you had cancer. You can't stand there and tell me this won't kill him, you walking away."

"I'm not walking away, sir. I'm being forced out, there is a difference. Besides, if I quit at least I can stay in DC. Perhaps…perhaps if he needs or wants me in his work, he can come to me in that capacity."

"You know it isn't the same."

"And working from Salt Lake City with no contact with him is better?" She was yelling now, her anger and exhaustion getting the better of her temper. Immediately she bit back the harsh words. "Sir, you've done so much for us, for the work. Thank you. But there's a point where all of us have to stop, to consider how far we want to take this, to step back. I'm making that decision for myself here and now."

For a long moment they stared at one another, Skinner's dark gaze hidden behind the glare on his thick glasses from the windows beyond. It was a sunny, hazy July day in DC. Scully could feel the humidity thick against the glass. Any other day she would long to be outside, not cooped up in the basement. Now she wanted to be anywhere but there, facing a huge, wide world without the X-files, the FBI…without Mulder.

She didn't want to leave him, not like this, not because of this.

"Will you keep an eye on him for me? Please?" It sounded so painfully intimate to ask her soon-to-be supervisor to do, to watch out for her partner, a man who was supposed to be little more than a friend. But protocol and correct behavior seemed superfluous now. What did it matter what her personal feelings were towards Mulder? Let Skinner think what he wished, he likely had ideas anyway. Half the Bureau did.

Skinner hardly seemed scandalized by her request. "I'll try. I doubt he'll listen to me any better now than he did with you here."

Scully nodded, snorting softly. Mulder would likely be worse. And perhaps that was what they were counting on, to allow him to impale himself on his own misbehavior. Unless of course, she thought wearily, Diana Fowley recovered quickly enough that she could be called upon to replace Scully in his work. Perhaps she would have the success keeping him in line Scully did not.

The idea left a bad taste in her mouth, but Scully ignored it. "I have to go, sir, pack my things."

"You are dead set on this?" It was his last ditch effort, and Scully found herself respecting the idea that he at least was trying to hard to make her reconsider. For a brief moment she felt appreciated.

"Yes, sir, it's for the best."

"Right. Send me the letter when you get in. I'll file it tomorrow with HR." It would at least give her twenty-four hours to reconsider before he made it official. Scully doubted that in that time her mind would be changed.

"Thank you, sir."

"Make sure wherever you end up, have them call me. I'll give you a stellar review, or kick their ass if they don't hire you."

She smiled ever so faintly. "Thank you."

Skinner nodded, hands running across his baldhead in agitation, staring out at the sunny day beyond. "Why do I get the feeling OPR just cut off its nose to spite its face?"

He wasn't the only one who felt that way. "It's politics, sir, it always is. Truth doesn't mean much in those sorts of situations."

Skinner didn't have a response as she finally turned and left the room.


	9. Don't Make This Any Harder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully tries to walk away from Mulder and the X-files.

In the end her box of things recovered from her makeshift desk was pitiably small. It was one cardboard box, the type they packed paper in, holding the pictures of her family that miraculously escaped the fire that had destroyed the X-files office, a baseball given to her by Mulder with "Fox" written across it in faded letters, a coffee mug, a keychain commemorating the Apollo 11 mission. Five years of her life boiled down to a box that fit easily on the passenger seat of her sedan.

Scully tried not to cry as she glanced at the remains of five years of work. Everything she had given up, everything she had sacrificed, all the truths she had fought for came down to this. She was walking away, not with her head held high or with a sense of a job well done, but knowing that she was leaving behind work unfinished, questions unanswered and a man who had come to mean the world to her.

How in the hell was she going to leave Mulder?

The muggy heat of July in DC made her clothes cling to her, sticky from nearly two days on her body. The desire to scrape off those hours from her skin and mind nearly made her turn from Alexandria and return to Georgetown, longing to hide in her bathroom. She could call Mulder later, when he had a chance to decompress, they would perhaps meet together at a bar and mourn over the end of their partnership. Even as her mind spun out the perfect scenario of an understanding Mulder wishing her luck, she knew it was a lie. She couldn't brush this off as a simple working relationship, one where they could part ways with wishes of "good luck" and continue on with their lives as if nothing had ever happened. Mulder deserved more than a perfunctory phone call, a sad declaration, and a beer.

Five years together, that was a long time for any relationship. When she had received the assignment for Scott Blevins years ago she had no idea what she was walking into. Scully had never seen real fieldwork, really, besides a case or two consulting with Jack Willis. She had been assigned to Quantico, and though she had requested real investigative work several times, the X-files was not even on the radar of places she thought she would end up. She had wandered into Fox Mulder's office, unsure of what to even expect, but confident that whatever it was and no matter how crazy Mulder was, she would be able to handle it with professional grace. How very naïve she had been! He had turned to shoot her his sardonically skeptical look over his reading glasses, somewhat amused at the idea that this slip of a five foot nothing woman was his new partner. He had tried so hard to scare her away that first case, with Billy Miles and alien bodies, and the loss of nine minutes. She hadn't believed him in regards to aliens, but she had believed that something strange was going on, something she couldn't simply explain by a wave of her scientific hand. It had interested her, it had intrigued her, and she had stayed despite her partner's biting humor and bad attitude.

Perhaps it had been that bad attitude that had drawn her to the work as much as the work itself. Mulder was in so many ways a wounded soul, the product of a shattered family, broken forever by a half-remembered memory of a sister long missing. The rest of the Bureau wanted to see a renegade, a cracked genius whose brilliance had burned him out far to early, and who now took to chasing after flying saucers and little green men. Few saw the side of Mulder that Scully did, the side he had revealed to her in that motel room in Bellefleur. There was a part of her partner that would forever be the twelve-year-old child searching for his sister, the part that angrily refused to believe there were no answers. It was his determinations, his stubbornness that propelled him and drove him and drew Scully to him inexorably. It was what she admired the most about him, his willingness to believe even in the face of so much doubt. It was why she stood by his side time and time again, even at the risk of her own career. It was why she came back to him even when it was wiser perhaps to walk away. It was why she fought so long and so hard for him, because in her heart she had to believe everything that she had suffered happened for a purpose, that there was some reason for it. She had to believe that, because he believed it. And as long Fox Mulder believed Scully could keep on going, keep on fighting…until she couldn't anymore.

She hadn't thought that that day would ever come. How many times had they slipped past punishment, with some unknown hand preventing the full weight of administrative judgment falling on their head? How many times had they come back to the game, whether at the hands of that Deep Throat character, or the smoking man playing the games only he seemed to understand, or some senator somewhere pulling strings that kept their work open just a little longer, allowed them to keep going when the powers that be wanted nothing more than to shut them down. But all those influences were gone now. No one was left to save Mulder, not even herself. Scully's gut twisted as tears pricked her eyes. She had wanted to save the work for him. She had wanted to prove to Cassidy their work was valid. Instead she had been worse than useless, her words falling on deaf ears. They had made up their minds long before she had walked into the room, perhaps before Dallas, maybe when Gibson Praise had disappeared, perhaps even earlier than that. They wanted Mulder out and the X-files shut down, and there was nothing Scully could do to stop them. She had failed him. Would he forgive her for it? Would she forgive herself?

How in the hell was she supposed to break any of this to him?

Scully swallowed back the burn in her throat as she parked her car in front of his apartment. She steeled herself as she went inside and waited for the rickety elevator that rumbled its way down to her, holding her breath till she was inside. She closed her eyes as she pressed the button for level four, a sense of doomed finality settling in. Quietly she stepped out, ignoring her rumpled suit and flyaway hair as her heavy steps took their familiar path up the sidewalk to his front door. The elevator rattled open on Mulder's floor, silent in the middle of the workday. Her heels caught as they drug tiredly against the floor, but she didn't hesitate as she came up to the crooked number forty-two and knocked. She knew he was in there, and didn't bother with keys as she opened the door. For once bright light filtered into his apartment as Mulder looked up at her, surprised, from where he sat at his desk, frowning at her from the halo of sunshine that surrounded him.

"What's wrong?" He already could sense something happened, not that in her current state it was hard to deduce. Scully swallowed before answering, searching for a voice she seemed to have suddenly lost.

"Salt Lake City, Utah. Transfer effective immediately."

What else could she say than that? Slowly he turned from her, shoulder's slumping as he threw his head back, and it took all of her reserve not to reach out to him and comfort him somehow. Instead she stood her ground on the far side of his living room. "I already gave Skinner my resignation."

He knew she was going to do it, she had warned him before they had gone back to Dallas this was the case, but like Skinner he had somehow made himself believe she wouldn't go through with it. Now he spun on her in his chair, eyes blazing emerald fire. "We are close to something here. We're on the verge!"

"You're on the verge," she pointed out, her throat thickening as she choked the words out. He was the one who was so close here, not her…not anymore. "Please don't do this to me."

He crossed the room in two strides, anger propelling him as he towered over her, the intense brilliance that she hadn't seen out of him in so long now flaming to life, almost blinding her. "After what you saw last night, after what you've seen, you can just walk away?"

His words cut even as her righteous indignation burned to life. Could he not see how difficult this was for her? She didn't want to do this, didn't want to be how this all ended. She had no choice, did he not understand that?

"I have," she replied with more assuredness than she actually felt in that moment. "I did. It's done."

Her insistence took him by surprise, and something like desperation flared to life behind Mulder's fevered pleading. "I need you on this, Scully."

Oh God, he couldn't do this to her now, not with the pleading, not with the begging. "You don't need me, Mulder," she tried to assure him, calling upon Diana Fowley's implications, the points she made when she didn't think Scully could hear. "I've just held you back."

She might as well have slapped him in the face and told him he was a liar. He stared at her in hurt disbelief, wounded as she felt her face flush under the weight of his pained expression. He didn't believe that for an instant, that she held him back, she knew that, but the idea made all of this so much easier to swallow. He could do so much more work without her, with someone like Diana around. Perhaps, if he realized that, the hurt of Scully's leaving would lessen somewhat.

That idea didn't make her feel any better.

"I've got to go," she murmured, dropping her eyes from his, wanting nothing more than to rush away from him, from this, and cursing herself for not going with her idea of simply calling him. This had been so much worse than she had expected, so much harder. She had hoped he would understand, that perhaps he would accept her decisions and they could find some way to work together despite it. Now she knew he wanted nothing less than her on board and she couldn't do that anymore, not like this. This was so hard already and he was making it so much worse.

She tried to hold her head up straight, to force her steps quickly to the elevator, to hide behind its brushed metal doors before she crumbled and dissolved in a sea of tears. It had been a mistake coming there, confronting him. He didn't understand. Skinner had been right, he couldn't fathom the sacrifice this was for her. In the end he would realize she was right, that he was better off this way, they both were. It would just take some time and he would realize she was right. He would be more effective without her there. No more chasing after her when she was captured, no more worrying about what happened to her, and certainly no more having to justify his work to her as she doubted his every step and called him out on his theories. How much further would his work progress without her there?

"You want to tell yourself that so you can quit with a clear conscience, you can. But your wrong." Mulder's anger rang out down the hallway behind her, stopping her as she turned to face him.

Hadn't he been the one who called her a spy, accused her of betraying him, of taking down her notes and going behind his back to report to Skinner of his erratic behavior? He had doubted her once, for a long time. It had taken years before he trusted her, and even then she wondered particularly now with Diana back. Scully had done nothing but dog his steps, doubt him and nitpick, force him to answer for everything. How much of a boon had she really been over five years outside of her loyalty?

"Why did they assign me to you in the first place, Mulder?" Had he really forgotten over all these years? "To debunk your work, to rein you in, to shut you down."

"But you saved me," he insisted, his expression ragged as he crossed the space between them. "As difficult and frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You've kept me honest. You've made me a whole person. I owe you everything, Scully, and you…owe me nothing."

His words, raw and earnest, slashed across her rational sensibilities, tore open the careful wall she had built up to get her out of the apartment and through to the safety of her car where she could break down in peace. Her control failed as tears flooded her vision. She stood, rock still as he reached for her, trembling fingers wrapping around her arms as he willed her to look up at him.

"I don't want to do this alone," he murmured softly, begging. "I don't even know if I can. And if I quit now, they win."

Whatever self-control she possessed dissolved in the face of his simple request, shattered as she found herself closing the few inches between them, burying her face against his shoulder as she sobbed quietly, Mulder's arms wrapping around her tightly. Somewhere in the distance, what remained of the rational part of her brain reminded her that of course Mulder wouldn't be alone, but it was lost as her heart cried and broke. She didn't want to leave him, she didn't want to go, but she had no choice, no hope. He was placing the weight of his entire quest on her shoulders, and she didn't know if she could carry it anymore for him. How strong did he want her to be?

And yet, he had just opened up to her in a way she hadn't thought possibly, had revealed to Scully something she had not expected from him, just how much she meant in his life. It pleased her and confused her, her emotions churning as she tried desperately to make sense of it, to understand what this meant. She had come here determined to walk away, to maintain a friendship if she could, but to leave Mulder and the X-files behind, and now he was declaring he could not go on without her?

She wanted to throw herself at him, to promise she wouldn't leave, even as her resolve to do so steadily crept back to the fore. Slowly, she pulled away, searching for words to say and finding none. Instead, she looked up at him, his gaze still imploring as she carefully reached up to pull his forehead down, brushing her lips across his skin softly. She would have to make him understand why she was doing this. She pressed her forehead to his, as if hoping by doing so he would see and understand how hard this was for her, as if the tears still coursing down her face weren't a dead giveaway.

Scully could feel him wordlessly begging her not to leave him, even as he pulled away, hands still resting on the back of her head. Breathlessly, she stared up at him, wanting to explain to him why this had to happen, why it was necessary, and finding herself helpless to do so as she met his gaze. The raw honesty of his declaration still burned, and Scully felt herself breathless as she tried to find words that all died before forming coherent sentences. She should pull away now, run for the elevator and not looked back. A sense of danger flared to life, a brief panic fluttering in her heart as she realized in an instant that something explosive was threatening, something that would change everything if she didn't stop it. And God help her, Scully realized, she didn't want to stop it. For the first time since she was partnered with Mulder she wanted to take his hand and jump into the darkness with him and see where the hell two of them would land.

It didn't seem to matter whose fingers tightened around the other, pulling them forward or who leaned into the embrace first. His lips touched hers, soft, questioning, nearly chaste. For the briefest of moments, she could taste burnt coffee and salty sunflower seeds, and longed to ignore every rational alarm sounding in her brain at the moment as her fingers wrapped softly in his dark hair, prepared to pull him closer.

The bee sting almost didn't register at first, but it hit a nerve, causing an instant reaction as a nearly electric pain shot out from her neck, radiating down her spine as she hissed in surprise. In an instant she pulled away from Mulder, grasping at her neck under her suit collar, the pain bringing her back to her senses with the effect of twenty icy buckets being dumped on her head. The skin under her fingers was already taught and throbbing as she whimpered, trying to determine what in the hell happened.

"I'm sorry," Mulder rushed apologetically, flushing mildly as Scully rushed to reassure him.

"Something stung me." And God, did it hurt. Her entire neck ached from it as pain shot down her back and around her throat. This wasn't right. Panic rose in her as she ran through all the symptoms of anaphylactic shock in her mind. She had never been allergic to been stings before. How many times in her life had she been stung?

Mulder pulled back her clothing, easily picking out the insect in question. The bee was identical to the swarm that had surrounded her the night before in Texas, and somehow had made its way this whole time in the folds of her collar. "Must have gotten in your shirt," he shrugged apologetically, as Scully's panic turned into full-blown fear.

"Mulder, something's wrong." Already her breath was becoming thready, pain now crossing her chest, seizing her lungs as she struggled to take a normal breath.

"What?" Instantly the bee was forgotten as he reached for her, amusement changing to alarm in an instant.

"I'm having lacinating pains…in my chest." She tried to explain, but felt that even the effort of talking now was becoming hard. Suddenly the world slowed around her, her body feeling heavy and clumsy.

"My motor functions are being affected," she gasped as she felt herself falling. Mulder grabbed her before she hit the floor, easing her to the ground gently as he called her name. It all sounded so very far away. "My pulse is thready…a funny taste in the back of my throat…"

He looked terrified as he felt for the pulse that fluttered just under his fingers at her throat. "I think your going into anaphylactic shock."

"No…I have no allergies," she tried to insist, but he was gone already to his apartment and phone. She could hear him frantically barking about an agent being down.

What was happening to her? Scully could feel her throat constricting as breathing became more difficult. Blackness hovered at the edges of her awareness, and a small voice in the back of her head grumbled loudly that it would be ironic that the day she finally walked away from the X-files was the day she would die of something that she didn't know she was allergic to. But at least, she reasoned, she would die with the knowledge of just what she meant to her partner.

"Scully….Dana, you'll be fine," Mulder rushed back to her side, throwing himself down on his knees, ignoring the jarring pain of the hard floor as he shoved a pillow from off his armchair under her head. "The ambulance is on the way, they'll get you to the hospital. We will sort this out."

Scully wanted to have his confidence, but even now it was hard to focus on him. The air she was breathing seemed heavy, and she could feel herself slipping every so slightly. Her fingers were numb, even though she knew he was squeezing her slim fingers so tightly the bones ground together.

It could have been three minutes or three hours by the time she heard the noise from the elevator shaft of paramedic units on the scene. She lay unable to speak as they rushed to her, ignoring Mulder's barked orders as they began to gently lift her to the gurney. Her mouth was forced open as one medic peered inside, the other one checking her pulse and blood pressure as they strapped her down and rushed her to the elevator. In the distance she could hear Mulder following close behind, demanding to know what they thought was wrong with her.

Mulder shouldn't be allowed near medical professionals, she thought wearily as the elevator doors closed around them. He only seemed to make any medical situation worse. The thought made her giddy, though she had no ability to even laugh, even as the medics forced an oxygen mask on her face. The air flooded her nose and throat, and felt sweet as she tried desperately to take more in.

All was chaos as she was taken out of the lobby and loaded into the ambulance. The two paramedics shot information back and forth faster than her sluggish brain could process, and all the while Mulder was shouting out information on bees, allergies, and viruses. Scully felt herself lifted in the air and loaded into the ambulance and secured inside as Mulder asked what hospital she was being taken to.

The gunshot report was the only answer Scully heard in response.

As if she wasn't already frightened enough, blind terror seized her as she tried to turn her head towards the sound, Mulder's frantic request suddenly silenced. But she could barely move as it was and she couldn't protest even if she wanted to. The ambulance peeled off, the fate of her partner unknown.

"We'll need to put her under," one of the medics said, already reaching for an IV and prep kit. "It's the only way to slow things down till we can get her in the refrigeration unit."

"Make it quick." The other man grimly checked Scully's vitals once more. "If she got one of the bees, she got the standard stuff, not the new variant from Dallas."

Dallas? Scully's eyes widened in alarm.

"They'll ship her off with the others then?"

"Probably. His partner sounded regretful. "It's a shame. Seems to pretty too be going there."

"Still, it's better that than the alternative, right?" The first medic studied her sadly, almost sympathetically. "We're going to put you to sleep for now. Don't worry, we'll keep you safe."

Scully couldn't have protested even if she wanted to, though her mind screamed at them until the very moment she fell into complete unconsciousness.


	10. What Once Was Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully is reunited with those she thought she lost forever.

The cushion was soft under her cheek, a warm cocoon for sleeping. The scent of tea - Darjeeling she thought - wafted up her nostrils. Scully could make out voices, faintly, but had trouble understanding what they said. They sounded so familiar though, achingly so. Her head felt so heavy and her eyes refused to open. What was that taste in her mouth?

"Dana?" Cool fingers stroked her cheek. "You can wake up now, you know. It's all right."

She tried to pry her eyelids open, managing to get one wide enough to frown mistily up at the outline hovering over her. Where was she? She groaned, trying to express that, but coming out with only a long, protracted "Mmmmmppphh…"

"Eloquent!" The voice chuckled as Scully ducked her head back into the cushion, rubbing her eyes violently. "You never were a morning person."

"Quit picking on your sister. She'll wake when she's ready." A deep, masculine voice in the distance rumbled in weary amusement. Scully stopped still upon hearing it, her face still buried in the pillow, almost afraid to look up. She knew that voice well. It instantly conjured up family gatherings and sibling arguments, childhood afternoons crawling across the command deck of a Navy destroyer. It was the voice she would listen to at night as she lay in bed, murmuring to her mother over the late night news, or humming softly over her head as she curled in his lap, a copy of Moby Dick hovering in front of her as he read to her in a horrible, Nantucket accent.

"Ahab," she whispered, raising her head slowly from its hiding place, her dewy eyes blinking into focus on the figure sitting at a chair just beyond. He smiled, shaking his balding head at her as she sat up to stare at him.

"Starbuck, you do get yourself in the damndest situations, don't you?" There was no condemnation in his eyes, only laughter as in an instant Scully launched herself at him, arms thrown around him as if she were a five-year-old girl. William Scully grunted, wheezing a chuckle as his daughter squeezed him with a strength that belied her short stature and slight frame.

"You're real!" She pulled away to stare down at him. "You're alive?"

"Alive? Well no, Starbuck, not quite." William smiled sadly, glancing towards the figure that hovered just beyond them. "That doesn't mean we are any less real."

"We?" Scully turned to regard the other figure present, the tall, willowy woman who stood grinning at the display Scully was making.

"I always told you to follow your instincts, didn't I?" Melissa braced herself against a similar onslaught to what Scully had just unleashed on her father.

"I saw you dead," Scully cried as she wrapped her arms so tightly around her sister's neck it brought the taller Melissa down to her level. "You died on the operating table! You died."

"I did," Melissa assured her, disentangling herself from her sister's frantic arms. "I am dead."

It sunk in, finally, what it was her father and sister were saying, as she pulled away and stared at them both. A chill ran across her skin as she considered what it meant. "You…you are dead? You aren't really here?"

"No, we are here, and so are you, but we aren't technically alive." Melissa corrected mildly. "You are, for now, but we aren't."

"I'm alive?" Scully frowned, trying frantically to understand why there was a possibility she might not be. Better still, why were her dead family members appearing before her in what she now realized was her own apartment.

"How did I get here?" She rubbed at her suddenly aching head, trying to remember how she found herself in this predicament. She had just been at Mulder's, hadn't she? She was telling him something important. He had been upset, something happened…a gunshot….darkness.

"This is your safe place," Melissa replied, curling up on one of Scully's armchairs, just as she had days before she died. "It's sort of ironic, considering how many times your apartment has been broken into."

"It's because it's mine," Scully replied absently, frowning around the room that was so familiar to her. Every inch of it was her apartment, down to the fireplace in the corner, little used. On the coffee table sat a tray with a steaming pot, the tea she smelled as she was waking.

"I didn't think I owned tea," she muttered, collapsing back on the couch she had been lying on.

"It's your vision, not mine," Melissa shrugged. "You want a cup?"

"Sure," she replied absently, frowning between her father and sister. Was this a dream? Was she sleeping? "I don't know why I'm here." Something about her father's words struck her as she frowned over at him. "What do you mean 'damndest situations'?"

"You don't remember how you got here, do you?" He accepted a cup passed to him by Melissa, blue eyes narrowing in surprise at Scully. "You're sick, Dana. For now, you're in a coma."

Again? Scully avoided Melissa's pointed gaze as she accepted her own cup, trying to think back. How did she get sick? She'd been fine just that morning hadn't she? What had she been doing? There was a case….Dallas, a bomb…it had gone off….looking for someone to blame…. separating her and Mulder….

It clicked, thudding into her foggy memory as she nearly dropped the mug in her fingers. "I was leaving the FBI. I told Mulder, but…I was stung." Her free hand reached behind her neck, to the scar that normally rested there, where her implant was. No bee sting rested nearby. Her fingers curled against her skin as she thought furiously. The virus she had been studying, the one that had killed the men in Dallas, was it connected? Threads of a conversation between two paramedics rose to the surface, and the sound of a gunshot…Mulder…

"I've got to go back!" She sat down her mug, jumping from the couch as her father reached out to grab her wrist, stopping her.

"You aren't anywhere where you can help, Dana. Here is as safe of a place as any."

"Dad, they shot Mulder! He could be dead…" Tears sprang to life as she contemplated just what the hell was going on. Was she in a hospital? Did anyone know what had happened? Was her partner lying dead in the street in front of his apartment with no one the wiser as to what had happened?

"Where you are, you can't help, Starbuck." The warmth in her father's voice turned sadly grim. "For now, you are safer here."

Scully paused, blinking down at her sturdy father, unnerved at the regret. "I'm dying then?"

"Perhaps. It's hard to say." He motioned towards the couch again, clearly uncomfortable with her mentioning her own death. "Things might work out."

What was with the maddeningly vague answers? Ahab was always straightforward. Honesty was the mark her father lived by. She collapsed on the couch again, frowning at the man she had loved and worshipped al of her life. "Why can't you just tell me what's happening?"

"Because we don't know ourselves," Melissa offered, hands wrapped around her tea mug as she contemplated it thoughtfully. "All we know is that you are safe for now. Wherever you are, you are being taken care of. And maybe…" She shrugged her slim shoulders.

She may or may not be dying. She was someplace she didn't know, trapped in her own mind with the memories of her long dead father and sister. It really was one of her father's "damndest situations". She slumped to the pillows behind her, torn between hysterics and raw frustration.

"I had just given my resignation. I had finally decided to walk away." Irritated tears pooled as she punched a cushion in sheer frustration. "I'd finally had enough, of the lies, of the betrayal, of every good thing I had ever done being torn down because of someone else. I was doing what you wanted, Ahab, I was leaving the FBI." She sat up to glance at her father, causing the tears to fall. "I was going to go back to being a doctor. I was leaving it all behind - leaving him behind."

The look on Mulder's face when she told him she was leaving, the raw desperation, his confession, what nearly happened in the hallway outside of his apartment. She remembered that now. The scent of him as he drew near, the thrill that coursed through her when his head bent towards hers, the faintest touch of contact - till the apian interruption had cut off whatever might had happened in the hallway.

"Leaving him behind, Starbuck?" One of her father's ruddy eyebrows raised sharply, a knowing look crossing his weathered face. "This partner of yours, is that who you are talking about?"

"Fox, Dad," Melissa supplied, mischievously shooting Scully a knowing smile, one that made her groan inwardly.

"He prefers to be called Mulder," Scully shot back, ignoring her sister's delighted snort. Did this Melissa know about the almost kiss, about what Scully felt for the man who loomed so large in her life? Of course she did. She had suspected before she died, had left careful hints and sideways comments, all with the speculative eye towards "Fox" her handsome, if eccentric, partner.

"Is that the man you were working with, the one that Bill said chased aliens and had other crazy ideas?" William frowned, clearly not liking Melissa's implications or the furious blush that stole across his younger daughter's cheeks.

"He's a good man, Dad." Scully quickly rose to his defense, as she had so many other times with her father and brother. "He's honest, and loyal, and driven, and passionate. He wants the truth, that's all."

"And you are walking away from a man like that?" Her father always had the knack of cutting to the chase of any problem, and he sliced straight towards hers with precision. She squirmed slightly under his pointed gaze, remembering similar sorts of discussions after the nuns had sent her home for punching boys on the playground.

"It's not as simple as that, Ahab." How she wished it were. "They were blaming us for something we didn't do. They were running me out. They were going to separate us."

"And you felt it was easier to walk away than to stand and fight?" Disapproval laced William's words. "That's not the sort of thing I taught you to do, Dana."

"What else was I supposed to do," she retorted snappishly, feeling stung at her father's surprising disappointment. God, the last thing she ever wanted to do in life was to be a disappointment to this man. "I would have thought you of all people would be relieved I was leaving the Bureau. You never liked me there to begin with. You always told me you felt it was too dangerous, that you preferred I chose something safer, and you were right, it was too dangerous. I was thrown into something that was so much bigger than me that I didn't understand, and I tried to do the right thing. I wanted to do what you would have wanted me to do, but it was too much."

Too much…Scully had given too much. Her health, her ability to have children, the only daughter she would likely ever have from her body, all gone, and for the sake of someone else's plan. Now her career and reputation was being taken as well? Hadn't she given enough?

"What does Fox have to say about this?" Melissa cut into the silence, hitting at the heart of Scully's conflict. She, like William, was always far too perceptive.

"He didn't want me to go." Her arms wrapped around herself as she thought of Mulder's words, of his pleading. _I can't do this alone…._

"Do you want to leave him?"

"Of course I don't!" She glared at her sister, knowing Melissa knew better than that. "I don't want to leave him. I don't want to abandon him. But what choice do I have? They took the X-files away from us, they are sending me to Utah. At least this way I can still be close." And yet so far away, she acknowledged. By choosing to leave the Bureau, Scully was willingly walking away from the search. Soon, she would be concerned with other matters, and she wouldn't be available to chase after spaceships or perform strange autopsies. Her world would move on, past Mulder, past the X-files, past the truth.

"It sounds as if your heart has already made a choice." Melissa replied, sipping from her tea. Damn her and her Zen like calm.

"You and hearts and intuition," Scully snapped at her elder sister, fretfully rising off the couch to pace in front of her large, bay windows, streaming silvery sunshine. "I'm talking about the real world and a real situation and you think it is as simple as following a funny feeling in my insides? Do you really think it is that simple?"

"Why isn't it?"

"Because, Melissa, there are regulations, rules, duty. You know, all those things that Dad was always preaching to us." Scully flung a sharp look at her father, the man whose entire life had been defined by honor, loyalty, and duty.

"Fox took that sort of oath, too, and he doesn't seem to have a problem following his heart." Melissa wasn't about to be denied in her argument.

"And where has it got Mulder? They've taken away his life's work. They've destroyed his credibility. At the end of the day, what is he going to have to show for everything he's risked, that I've risked?"

"So is this about what Fox has lost or what you have?" One of Melissa's eyebrows arched up in challenge and again felt her sister's words cut to the quick. She found she didn't like her implications.

"Are you saying that I don't care about what Mulder has lost?" Anger turned Scully's words hard and brittle.

"I'm saying Dana is that you both have lost. I'm asking you to consider why it is you feel the need to flee when he is staying to fight on."

"To fight what? For what purpose?" Scully found herself nearly shouting now, frustrated that the two people she loved so much in her life seemed to be the two now who didn't understand. "To be what? The Starbuck to his Ahab as he chases the goddamn white whale." She knew the point would hit home with her father. Her Ahab, the captain she would follow to the ends of the earth and back.

"You know what happened at the end of that story, Daddy?" Scully blinked at the filmy haze of tears that crowded her vision as she turned to her father. "It would be insanity, wouldn't it? Following him after this pursuit when I have a chance to step away now, to live that life you always wanted for me."

"Starbuck," William sighed, his deep voice warm and sad, as he held out a calloused, worn hand for her. Without thinking, Scully took it, allowed herself to be pulled in by her father, as if she were a child again. Despite the roundness of his once trim belly, her slight frame just fit as she settled against him as she had when she was a girl. Oh, for life to be as simple as that again. She sniffled as fresh tears brimmed and she found herself sobbing quietly into her father's shoulder.

"Perhaps, Dana," he rumbled softly as he rubbed her shaking shoulders. "You should worry much less about what it is your mother and I expected from you in life, or what your brothers think you should do, or even your sister. I know I gave you a hard time about it when I was there, but this isn't about living the life I wanted for you. It's about living the life you are meant to live, and not me, not your mother, not your family, not even those bastards at the Justice Department can tell you otherwise."

"Those 'bastards' are the ones who decide my career," Scully argued mildly.

"Perhaps they are, but that doesn't mean you can stand up for what is right, does it?" Her father made it sound so simple. "Remember when you were seven and you kept getting sent home from school by the nuns for fighting on the playground?"

Scully blinked, the non sequitur surprising her. "Yeah?" She pulled away enough to frown down in confusion at her father. "You and Mom got mad at me for fighting with boys."

"And what was your excuse every time?" There was amusement and pride behind his words, as Scully paused, thinking back nearly thirty years.

"I didn't like that they were bullying the younger kids and when they wouldn't stop I'd punch them in the face." Scully had horrified her pious teachers by being the sprite of a girl who fearlessly gave black eyes to boys older and bigger than her, fearlessly promising more if they didn't stop picking on kids who couldn't defend themselves. Clearly, it never occurred to Scully she was technically small enough that she shouldn't be able to defend herself.

"As much as I didn't want you picking fights, Starbuck, you fought them well. You always stood up for what was right, even if it wasn't the proper thing to do, even if it wasn't what your mother and I wanted you to do. And I hate to admit that in those moments I was very proud of you for doing it."

"Proud? I seemed to remember being grounded more than once for that."

"True, but your heart was in the right place." William Scully beamed up at his youngest daughter with a pride that Scully couldn't remember seeing out of him in the last years of his life, a pride she had desperately wanted out of him. "I was proud of you then, Dana, and I'm proud of you now. Don't let them win at this. You've fought to hard. Don't allow everything you've stood up for come to nothing because they want it to."

Those weren't the words she expected to hear out of Ahab. "What about becoming a doctor? You wanted that for me more than you wanted me to become an FBI agent."

"You'll be a doctor, but this is the fight you threw yourself into, and I've never known you to walk away from one of those. For now, this is where you need to be."

Scully didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps this was the sort of conversation she expected out of Melissa, but not out of her father, and certainly not while she may be lying somewhere mysterious, infected once again with another alien virus. Perhaps it was the same one this time. 

"I don't believe in visions, you know," she murmured mostly to herself, arms tightening briefly around her father.

"Then perhaps you should stop having them every time you are in a coma," Melissa teased. "You really need to stop getting infected with strange things."

"Believe me, I didn't have a choice," Scully sighed, feeling suddenly foolish as she considered how it was she got in this predicament. "I was standing in the hallway talking to Mulder…" She trailed off, with the briefest memory of Mulder's breath across her lips and her fingers curled in his soft, dark hair.

The world around her jerked with sudden violence. Scully started, pulling away from her father, as her skin turned suddenly feverish, her veins burning ever so slightly.

"What in the hell?" She rose, watching her apartment shimmer suddenly, the sunlight from the window waver and break dangerously.

"He's found you," Melissa said simply, setting down her tea and rising, as if the world around her wasn't shifting and crumbling. "It's time for you to go home."

"Home?" Scully stared stupidly around her, at the comfy couch and overstuffed chairs that made up her living room. "I am home."

"You can't hide here forever, Dana, you know that." Melissa smiled her same irritatingly, Zen-like smile, reaching out to hug Scully fiercely. "We'll always be here."

"But I miss you," Scully sniffled into her sister's cotton-clad shoulder. Why was the world shaking, pounding, breaking? "I don't want to have to leave you."

"You aren't leaving us, Starbuck," William rose from his seat, standing to wrap both of his daughters in a hug that seemed to encompass the quickly fading world. "We were right here the entire time, always are. And we always love you."

Everything tilted violently; the hammering sound pounding at the walls, reverberated through Scully's brain. "What's happening?"

"Don't give up," Melissa whispered in her ear, as the bright sunshine from outside began to fade. "Don't ever give up, Dana."

The world rang with the sound of whatever was pounding the walls, and the familiar faces of her father and sister faded as they were soon plunged into gray twilight. Scully sobbed, wanting to cling tightly to them, to not let them go. But her arms were now limp, and she was cold…so cold. Where was she? What was happening?

The world shattered and broke, scintillating pieces scattering, as somewhere in the distance someone moved. She couldn't see, she could only hear as out of the darkness pale fingers reached for her and a familiar voice called her name.

Mulder…always Mulder….he never gave up. Not like she did. He had come to take her home.


	11. Christchurch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully wakes in the hospital, again.

"How is she doing?" He sounded like Mulder, a soft, baritone gravel, a low rumble with the hint of the nasal-inflected accent that landed somewhere between New York and Boston. Where had he come from? Why was she there?

Cool fingers grazed her brow, then landed on her right wrist, pressing for a moment, and then a hum of quiet approval. "Better, much better." It was a woman, though one with an accent Scully had never heard before. It sounded vaguely British but off, a bit flat and stretched to thin. No one she knew in DC spoke like that. Where was she?

Cold…miles and miles of white, and she was falling into it, scrambling for Mulder as she hit, crystals cutting into tender skin, rapidly turning numb. The world was a shower of ice and vapor as Scully closed her eyes and wondered what hell she had woken up to….

"I think she's coming out of it." The woman sounded as if she approved. As if obliging her, Scully's eyelids fluttered, faintly, as she struggled to make sense of the swimming images that seeped up through her consciousness. There was screaming and things chasing her…but before that there had been Ahab…maybe…and hadn't she fought with Mulder? Something about Utah? She wanted out. He tried to talk her out of it, to stop her. He had tried….

Her eyes snapped open on a completely unfamiliar face smiling down at her.

"Hullo, there!" The woman grinned, green eyes crinkling at the corners of her freckled face. "I wondered if you weren't waking up on us."

It took Scully less than a second to recognize her surroundings, even if she hadn't been in the location before. The trappings of a hospital room were becoming more painfully familiar to her as a patient than they ever were as a doctor. The gray, sleet outside her large, open window didn't correlate with any place in Washington DC she knew of, at least not in the dead of the muggy, Mid-Atlantic summer.

"Where am I?" Her voice croaked and rasped, the sound grating out as if she had swallowed barbed wire at some point. The nurse grinned again. It seemed her permanent disposition, even her rainbow printed scrubs smiled, despite the grayness outside.

"Christchurch Hospital, New Zealand, you were flown here two days ago." The woman's dark hair was pulled back in a severe bun and it jerked across Scully to the corner. "Your partner there nearly caused an international incident trying to get you admitted."

"I at least said 'please' before I started mentioning the US Embassy." Mulder was unrepentant and shaggy, his bright green eyes shining over several days' worth of beard growth. Scully could see why the nurse would be so dubious about anyone looking the way he did demanding treatment. Her normally impeccable partner looked as if he'd hitchhiked to New Zealand. His hair was limp and unwashed and he looked as if he'd been trying to fold his lanky frame into the tiny chair he uncurled out of.

"Christchurch…New Zealand? How?" The words squeaked out of Scully's much abused throat as she wondered what the hell had happened to her and how the hell had she ended up at the other side of the world? Hadn't she just been in Mulder's apartment?

"For that you need to ask your man here." The nurse cast an amused, appreciative glance towards Mulder, who had succeeded in stretching out cramped limbs enough to reach Scully's bedside. He only shrugged mildly as his long fingers reached for hers, silently tangling them together. What had happened? She tried to silently question him, but he only met her curiosity with assurance.

So much for their silent communication, she thought groggily, as her foggy mind tried to piece together what was going on.

"We are work partners," she tried to explain feebly to the nurse, not liking the connotation of the term "your man" at all.

"Yes, I know about you and the FBI." The nurse sounded impressed. What idea did she have about FBI agents anyway? "Your partner says you two were on a case down in the Antarctic. Sounds like a strange place for the US government to be sending a pair of investigators."

Mulder couldn't clear his throat fast enough as he nearly choked in the effort. "Nurse Milligan, is she doing well enough I could have her alone for a bit?"

Sharp eyes cut to Mulder's, slightly greener than his own, and laughing pointedly. "Right, I have some paperwork to put in anyway, report her vitals, and let her physician know. Try not to tire her out too much." She winked at Scully cheerfully before slipping out, closing the door of the hospital room behind her.

Just what in the hell was going on?

"Mulder," she began as he held up a warning finger, pressing it to his lips briefly as he slipped over to the door. He was paranoid at the best of times, but it struck Scully as particularly over-the-top as he opened the door enough to peek outside, before shutting it again firmly, seemingly satisfied at whatever he observed.

"We are in a foreign hospital. Who is watching us?" Even tired, confused, and now she realized, aching, Scully could manage to sound peevish as she tried to sit up further in the bed. Suddenly more aware of herself, it was becoming clear that whatever happened, she had taken a beating. Her joints ached in that sort of way that only happened after a nasty case of the flu and there were scaly, blistered patches on her hands. Her cheeks felt raw and stung as she grimaced.

"Do you remember anything, Scully?" Mulder turned to her, gaze boring down on her with a familiar intensity. It gave Scully pause. She hadn't seen Mulder this engaged in forever it seemed, since before Michael Kirtschgau, before her illness. What was going on?

She frowned as she tried to make sense of the jumble of images that surfaced to life. "No, I mean…not really….nothing makes sense." 

There were unearthly screams rending the air, hot steam against her icy skin, fear, and confusion as she tried to make sense of what was happening. She had just been in Mulder's hallway, just told him she was leaving the FBI. He had begged her not to go. He had told her he couldn't do this without her, that he didn't want to. His lips had brushed hers for the briefest of moments…

Scully's raw, chapped cheeks flushed brightly, her eyes wide as they attempted to meet his, but he was preoccupied, thinking, turning to pace the small length of her hospital room. What had happened in that hallway? Scully struggled to remember, but came up short. A sting…hadn't there been a bee? She had gone into shock. The ambulance came and there was the unmistakable report of a handgun firing.

"You were shot," she blurted, remembering the terror suddenly, the hysterical fear that her partner was indeed dead.

"What?" Mulder turned, blinking for the briefest of moments, clearly lost in whatever thoughts he was mulling over. "Oh, yeah. I'm fine."

"At point-blank range?" Scully eyed him, doubtfull despite the fact he was standing right in front of her. Dutifully he sighed, wandering over and lifting a shank of his limp hair. A bright, red welt still stood out, vivid against his pale skin, just across his brow.

"See, now we match!" He smirked, reaching for a similar, pale scar that ran just across her hairline, one she had received in his apartment years ago. "I figure we can win at the next office picnic, partners with the most identical scars."

"That's not funny," she admonished, resisting the urge to check out the still healing wound and ensure he was all right for herself. He danced just out of her limited reach anyway, as if knowing that was what she was thinking.

"I'm fine, Dana." Fear flickered to life behind the intensity. Scully's pulse fluttered briefly.

"What happened?" She finally vocalized the one question she had asked herself repeatedly since waking up. "Why are we in New Zealand? What is this about Antarctica?"

Mulder stopped in his pacing, heaving himself back into the chair that was too small for him, seeming to flop into it as he worked out which part to begin with. "You were at my apartment. You were there to tell me you were leaving the X-files."

Leaving…yes. Memory resurfaced finally, the meeting with OPR, AD Cassidy's scoffing derision, Skinner begging her to reconsider. They were separating them, she and Mulder. The X-files were already closed to them. This was the final nail in the coffin. The bombing in Dallas was being laid squarely at their feet and it was being used as an excuse to keep her from Mulder permanently.

"There was a sting…a bee?" She remembered the sting at least, the lacinating pains, the terror that crept over her as her lungs seized and her breathing struggled. Mulder's grim nod confirmed what she recalled.

"Frohike found the bee later. My guess is that it hitched a ride with us back from the Mexico border."

The cornfields, the strange bio-dome, large hives filled with bees. "I'm not allergic to bees, Mulder, I never have been."

"It wasn't an allergic reaction you were having, Scully, it was a reaction to a contagion, a virus."

A virus? She was too tired and sore to scoff at him, but she knew he could read her dubiousness loud and clear.

"Scully, you've been on a full course of anti-virals for two days now, the same ones you gave me in Alaska. If you want, I can go get the nurse, confirm for you."

"It was a bee sting. What virus is passed on through something as harmless as that?"

"One that no one would suspect. One that can attack quickly and silently, without people noticing." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes glittering under his unkempt, greasy hair. "The kind that they would blow up an entire building to keep hidden from the public, one that caused the sort of damage you saw in those men in Bethesda."

"What, those men died of, Mulder, was something so virulent that it broke down the very cellular structure of their bodies." Absently Scully rubbed her own abdomen beneath the thick blankets that covered her. "I seem to be fine."

"You might not have been if I hadn't gotten to you." Darkness laced his words and Scully felt suddenly as cold as the skies outside of her window.

"What do you mean?"

"The ambulance that took you wasn't a real ambulance. The people who took you knew what had happened, expected what had happened. Likely as not they knew we were the two who broke into the facility in Texas and they were waiting, on the off chance one of us was accidentally infected with the contagion they were cultivating. It just so happened you were. They got to you first. I wouldn't have known the difference if they hadn't tried to take my head of for asking a simple question." He fingered red scar across his head ruefully.

Scully could remember the ambulance, the gunshot, but nothing more. "I don't know where they took me."

"I wouldn't have either, except that I had a lucky break." He leaned back again, stretching out his long, jean-clad legs. "Kurtzweil is dead."

He was the man who had started all this. "How?"

"I don't know, and I doubt anyone will notice or figure it out. Do you remember the man who we met in West Virginia? The one with the British accent, the one who said he knew my father?"

Scully prodded her still dim brain for a long moment, finally recalling a slim, graying man, one who had warned her not to return home, that they would try to kill her. "He was at your father's funeral. He had tried to tell me. He knows the men who killed my sister."

 

Scully shivered.

"He was waiting for me when I went looking for Kurtzweil. He was the one who told me where you were."

Strange. Scully had no idea who the man was, only that he claimed to know Bill Mulder, and that they were all involved in a conspiracy involving some sort of genetic manipulation, one that had somehow involved Mulder's sister. "What did he want?" She was half fearful of the answer. The last time Mulder had been promised the means by which to save Scully had been the year before. He had nearly sold his should to the devil himself then, just to find a cure for her cancer. She didn't want to think of what he was asked this time.

Mulder's answer surprised her. "Nothing."

"Nothing," she echoed, dubious. "When have these men ever given anything away without a price?"

"I won't say a price wasn't paid. He's dead."

That answer sobered her. "You know that for sure?"

"He booted me out of the car just before it exploded, I watched it burn." Mulder sucked at his bottom lip thoughtfully, teeth cutting into the soft flesh. "But not before he explained to me what this was all about; what my father was into, why they took Samantha and not me."

Scully's heart broke as she swallowed hard, her aching throat protesting against the welling of emotions at the site of Mulder so vulnerable. "You don't know if what he said was true."

"He had nothing to lose, Scully, only the dim hope and prayer that he could somehow stop this."

"Stop what?"

"The future," Mulder replied simply. "For the past fifty years, the men that my father worked with have been robbing Peter to pay Paul, to stop a invasion that they didn't understand."

"An invasion? So now it is about aliens again? Kirtschgau told us that was all a lie, a ruse to hide the truth, one they cleverly used to pull the wool over your eyes and play you like a fiddle."

"What Kirtschgau didn't know was that he was only mostly right." The fire that used to blaze so brightly in her partner when she first met him simmered for the briefest of moments, rekindled somehow by this mysterious man's words. "I believe Kirtschgau thought that what he said was true. The government has been working for years on bio-weapons, on a secret virus and antidotes. What he didn't realize was that the alien angle wasn't a lie, only we didn't understand the truth behind it."

"You mean to tell me that this man told you that the aliens brought this virus?"

"No, Scully…the aliens are the virus."

Before Scully could even hope to comprehend him, Mulder pushed on. "Humanity has only existed for a fraction of the time that life has been on this planet. What if we weren't first? What if there was someone else here, well before us? What if they never quite left?"

"Ancient viruses exist, new ones are found everyday…"

"It's not just a virus. Think about it, Purity Control. What was the first thing you said after studying it?"

"That it didn't appear to be a natural, terrestrial occurring life form," she conceded.

"You called it alien, and you were right. How many times have we run across this virus and has it ever behaved normally?"

"Normal is subjective with viruses. They adapt, they mutate, they change."

"Which is a matter of survival. Think about it, viruses are one of the most durable life forms on this planet for a reason. If you were a race that was dying, how better to ensure your survival than to utilize a form that not only perpetuations your own DNA, but infects the DNA of any other creature, allowing you to use that creature to perpetuation your species?"

Scully shuddered at the implication, ignoring the fact she felt it was patently impossible. "That isn't how viruses work. Any virologist or infectious disease expert would tell you that."

"If it were a terrestrial disease, I would agree with you." Mulder scrubbed at his unshaven face. "The pieces all make sense, Scully. The group my father was a part of a gwho]] discovered the truth about the virus years ago, discovered what it was, and thought they could stop it. They had bargained that the virus would mutate, that it would do what it did in Dallas."

There was something ominous in his words. "What are you saying?"

"The men my father worked with believed that they could stop a holocaust. They believed that they could subvert the inevitable. The kidnapping of women, the use of their ovum, the cloning projects, those weren't just methods to test bio-weapons. They were secret efforts to stave off an infection that would destroy humanity. They hoped they could create a vaccine. In some small measure they did, I suppose. It is what saved you."

The muscles in Scully's sore throat tightened, constricting back to the spot she thought the bee had stung her at. "How did I end up in Antarctica?"

"That I don't know." Mulder shook his head ruefully and he slumped into the chair, staring fitfully up at the ceiling. "The truth is I think it was the only way they could keep you alive. You weren't alone there. There were bodies, millions of them, stretching forever, all encased in ice. It was like a giant storage place, with people reaching back to the dawn of time."

It sounded like a dream, like something out of one of Mulder's horrible, B movies. "What sort of storage facility could house that many people and not be found, even in Antarctica?"

"The kind that can pick up and fly." Mulder's eyes slid from the ceiling to meet hers. "You didn't see it, did you, when we landed on the ice?"

Landed on the ice? Scully could barely remember how she even ended up in the predicament. "What?"

The fire returned, flickering to life above a sad, somewhat manic grin. "I was right all along. There are flying saucers. You were on one. I was on one. The truth about Roswell isn't that aliens made contact and our government was hiding it. The truth is that the aliens returned and made an ultimatum. They are coming back, and the virus, that is how they plan on doing it. We aren't all going down in an Independence Day blaze of glory. We are going to die slowly, infected one by one by an alien host who will use our bodies to gestate their race. What I saw on that ship were humans, all infected with the virus, all frozen in time to keep their precious cargo safe, until it was time for invasion."

This couldn't be the story he had to tell her? And yet he seemed deadly serious, worse yet, he seemed vindicated. He wasn't the fool anymore, not according to this fairy tale. He alone knew the truth, a horrible, terrifying truth about the future. She wanted to deny it, to tell him that the ice and danger put ideas in his head, but her broken memory betrayed her. Images of horrible claws catching at her, of creatures breaking through ice chambers rose to mind, and of falling…down, down, down….

"I can't back any of this and you have no proof."

"Doesn't mean this isn't what is happening. If I hadn't gotten to you sooner, you'd have been one of them too. They are using us to propitiate a new race of these creatures, a creature that existed on this earth well before humanity ever did. No trace of them has ever been found because their remains are the oil like substance we found, and now their brethren have returned to repopulate the species, at the expense of the interlopers who rose to dominance in that time. It is the crossroads my father and these men were at, either help the invasion along, in the hopes that a few, genetically modified survivors could make it through as a slave race, or resist, and inoculate the entire population against the oncoming storm before it was too late."

"The smallpox vaccinations." That piece of information clicked into place in Scully's mind. "They've been trying to use the smallpox inoculation as a template for a vaccination, likely in order to piggyback the two together, unsuspected. It's common place to vaccinate most everyone for smallpox."

"And that's where your bee comes in." Mulder nodded. "Remember the bee colonies I found in Canada, the ones Jeremiah Smith took me too? They are raising genetically modified bees as carriers. Skinner and I discovered the bees. They are also using genetically modified corn pollen to infect them as carriers. They then are set loose in swarms, where of course they will sting people, infecting them with smallpox, but it wasn't smallpox. It was an altered form, one that carried the alien virus. They wanted to see if the inoculations worked. They didn't."

What he was suggesting was horrific, terrifying in the extreme. But when had she ever, ever known Mulder to lie, to make this up? Perhaps regurgitate fallacies he had been told, wholeheartedly believing them, but who would make something like this up? "Mulder…if this is true…"

"I know," he murmured quietly, looking about as frightened by the possibility as she felt. "I don't even know where to begin. These men, they were robbing Peter to pay Paul, sleeping with the enemy in the hopes of stabbing them in the back. And now, I don't know if it is working." He gnawed at his lip again, pensive.

"The man did tell me one thing. My sister, she was a part of this program. My father was forced to choose, which child to give to their cause, to be cloned in the hopes of creating a genetic hybrid. For whatever reason, he had Samantha taken."

And yet, there was no explanation as to where she was taken or if she were still alive. Frustration mixed with grief as Scully thought of graying, broken Bill Mulder, the man she met in Alaska. He had blamed himself for what happened to his children. He hadn't lied about that. "Did this man know why your father made the decision he did?"

Mulder shrugged, shaking his head. "He said my father hoped that Samantha would at least survive. He thought that my father hoped I would be the one to uncover what was going on, to stop it…to fight it."

"Fight it?" The weight of what Bill Mulder laid on his son's shoulders seemed crushing. What he had just said, if even half of it were true, was forbidding, the idea of a virus poised to destroy them all, a secret held by only a few, and an alien race poised to take back what they assumed was their's. Scully wasn't certain believed Mulder's story, certainly she was sure no one else would. But who would make up a story of this magnitude, least of all Mulder?

She felt suddenly very small and frightened, lying in her hospital bed, thousands of miles away from home. This was so much bigger than she had ever dreamed, bigger than herself, bigger than Mulder, bigger than anything she had ever wanted to do with her life. She had dreamed of making a difference, of doing good, not saving the world, and now she was caught up into this as anyone. Was it really so simple as backing out of it now, especially if Mulder literally traveled to the ends of the Earth to save her when it would have been so easy to walk away and leave her? He refused to give up on her. How could she even contemplate giving up on him? Antarctica, of all places, how in the hell had she ended up there? And how had he gotten to her?

"Mulder," she murmured, raspy, suddenly overwhelmed by everything. "How did you get to me? If I was in Antarctica, how…civilians are just allowed down there unless it is for a purpose."

Mulder's pensive, worried look drew slowly into a sly smile. "I'll owe Skinner from now until the end of time. He pulled some strings with some Marine buddies of his, no questions asked, all I had to say was that you were in trouble. You know, I do believe our boss has a crush on you."

Ignoring the ludicrous suggestion regarding Skinner, glanced out to the cold, gray skies outside. "How are we getting back? Who knows we are here?"

"Don't worry about it. You don't think I haven't been working on it?" Mulder's mood lightened as he rose. "As soon as the doctor's here think you are ready to go, I'll spring you out. We'll head home."

Home…to what? Scully had tendered her resignation. She had no work to go home to. She had walked away from a future that now seemed too heavy and frightening to contemplate. She had walked away from the X-files, from conspiracies, from aliens, from him. What was she going home to?

"Don't think about those things now." Mulder was at her side again, sighing as he brushed hair away from her face with a long-suffering sigh. "Just get better. I'm tired of seeing you in hospitals."

Swiftly he leaned down, brushing his lips against her temple, whiskers scratching the already tender skin there. Scully's face flamed as he made contact and the memory of the near embrace in the hallways in front of his apartment flared fully to life again. Did he remember? Should she even bring it up to him?

"I'll get better," she breathed as he straightened, turning her embarrassment to wry humor. "But only if you promise to go somewhere and take a bath."

"A bath?" He made a show of sniffing his clothing, wrinkling his aquiline nose as it suddenly occurred to him that I must have been days since he last saw soap and water. "Yeah, I thought all the nurses kept giving me funny looks cause they liked the scruff."

"I think they were wondering if you were homeless."

"Right," he chuckled. "I'll get a room, go get cleaned up. You rest. We'll talk some more later."

Later, so much to talk and think about later. For now, she just wanted to go home, whatever that meant for her.


	12. Reconsideration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scully is insulted by OPR.

Scully had suspected that her story would not be met with approval and cheers by OPR, but to have the evidence right in front of them, evidence that came from her own, very real, near death experience be dismissed and redacted so easily, it was almost more of an insult that her initial meeting with OPR had been. Cassidy's false sympathy for what Scully had lived through did not hide the fact that she did not believe a single word of Scully's account, despite the report from Skinner, despite the account from the US scientific team that had found them, nearly frozen, laying beside the remains of a giant ice crater. Not even Scully's medical reports from New Zealand, all of which showed the anomalies Scully knew she could trace back to the virus she had studied for so long swayed the likes of Cassidy. None of it could be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced, thus it all had to be denied. Black marks wiping out the truth behind all the destruction, all the secrecy, and all the lies. They were where they started from, as always.

The marble covered hallway rang with her footsteps as they moved towards the elevator, but they didn't cover the call of her name ringing in the hushed silence. Scully turned towards Skinner, steps determined as he followed her with a look that stated he had just been given hell for her parting words for Cassidy. She regretted that, if for nothing else because of everything he had done to get her and Mulder back from New Zealand and get her into a meeting with OPR again.

"It didn't do me any good, did it?" She glared darkly past Skinner's shoulder towards the crowd of well-dressed people leaving the conference room. Scully could see Cassidy in the distance, throwing a cautious look towards where she and Skinner stood.

"It has worked some." Skinner gave her the faintest of hopeful looks. "OPR has agreed to my suggestion that you be allowed to stay in Washington. I made the case that in light of your recent disappearance and threat on Agent Mulder's life it was perhaps wiser to keep you both together in Washington, to ensure no other strange incidences happened."

Scully had a hard time believing they bought even half of Skinner's explanation. "Sir, this is all of course dependent on me staying with the FBI, and I turned in my resignation three weeks ago." She hadn't forgotten the letter she had given to her boss nor the implications of it.

"Isn't it convenient for you that I didn't turn it into HR yet?" Skinner hardly looked apologetic at her surprise. "Given the circumstances, I held onto it. I thought, with everything that happened, you might reconsider."

Reconsider? Scully watched Cassidy turn to walk away, back straight, her graying blonde head resolutely turned away. How blind she was. How blind she willed herself to be. Scully had given her everything, all the evidence to make her see the questions, to make her start to wonder, and still the AD had not listened, none of them ever did. What was the definition of insanity again? Repeating the same, destructive action, hoping for a different result?

"They aren't the only ones to tell, Scully." Skinner read her thoughts easily enough, his own dark eyes following Scully's gaze down the hallway towards Cassidy's retreating figure. "There are others out there who might listen, others who might not be so quick to dismiss what you found."

"I'm finding those people are few and far between, sir." They were practically non-existent, save for Skinner. "How could they not believe the evidence of my own illness, of Mulder nearly being killed?"

"People have an amazing capability of convincing themselves of anything if they want to." Skinner's words rang painfully true. How many times over the years did she convince herself that Mulder's theories were nothing more than fantasy conjecture?

"And you want me to return to try and fight against this?"

"Don't you want to?" One dark eyebrow rose to Skinner's bald scalp, eyeing her quietly. "Why would you have agreed to come back here to speak to OPR if you didn't want the truth heard?"

"Just that, sir. I wanted them to know what happened to me, what I experienced."

"And yet you could have just walked away. You could have come back from New Zealand, not come to the hearing, and left it all behind."

She could have. But the idea of doing that seemed somehow a slap in the face to Mulder after what he had done for her. He had literally gone to the ends of the earth to find her, to save her. She owed him that much.

A vague memory of her father's disappointment came to mind and of her sister's voice.

_Don't give up…_

"If you wanted to step away after all of this, Scully, no one could fault you. Certainly, I wouldn't. I think I could sleep easier at night knowing you weren't kidnapped by someone else and taken somewhere. But personally, you are too good of an agent to just walk away from this and I think you know that."

"I'm a good doctor as well," she shot back mildly.

"You are, but if even half of what you told that committee in there is true, can you really just walk away, knowing what is happening?"

"So you believe it?" Scully always wondered with Skinner. He played his opinions on matters like this close to the vest, always careful never to speak too much. It was the only way he could protect she and Mulder most of the time.

As always, Skinner's reply was cagey and cautious. "I know that these men have authorized and covered up many things over the years and I have to believe it's for a reason. Knowing what I do, let's say I'm not prepared to ignore any possibility."

"You know that won't make you particularly popular." She doubted Skinner was particularly popular now, judging from the reaction of those who exited the conference room.

"Let me worry about my ass. What about yours? Are you willing to walk away from this, Scully, after everything you've seen?"

He knew her answer. It was why he was pressing her so hard. Skinner hadn't wanted her to leave in the first place, and to be honest, in her heart of hearts, Scully hadn't either, not really. "If I stay, will I still be assigned with Mulder?"

"Frankly, I don't know anyone else crazy enough to work with him." Skinner looked torn between irritation by this fact or amusement. "But I will say this, what happened in there after you left...I don't know what will happen to the two of you. Some are considering your suggestion of opening the X-files, but most are vehement against having Mulder on it. And if they do open them again, they'll be under my watch. I can't say you two will be."

"Where are they going to put us?" She didn't like the sound of that and she knew Mulder would like it even less.

"I don't know. They've scheduled a hearing in three weeks, let them all work things out and allow the debris from Dallas to settle. But I'm warning you, you two might not like the results."

"We'll persevere. We always do." She smiled tightly, thinking of the days years ago when the X-files were first closed. Mulder's parking lot meetings, his random appearances in her autopsy classroom, the early morning phone calls just to discuss everything and nothing at all. She had no idea then where this journey would take them, certainly not to Antarctica, nor to that moment in front of his apartment, his breath warm against her skin, his fingers drawing her closer…

"So I'm taking this as your rescinding your decision?" Skinner cut into her thoughts. Scully's chapped and scratched cheeks flushing slightly as she tried to compose herself from her wandering thoughts.

"I am, sir, for now."

"Right." Her answer pleased him greatly, though she could hardly tell form his normal, taciturn expression. "Take the rest of the day, Scully. Go find your partner. Make sure he's not planning on any more unscheduled trips to Timbuktu or any other exotic locals?"

"Yes, sir." With the briefest of smiles she left Skinner, moving towards the elevators, contemplating her decision. She could have walked away just then, told Skinner that she was finished and insisted on her original decision. But the truth was, she really couldn't. She knew that, he knew that, and she was certain Mulder suspected. Though right now he was hiding somewhere in Washington, awaiting the final judgment on their actions, likely expecting that Scully's decision remained unchanged.

Suspected or hoped? In the days of her recovery and return to the US, Mulder had been his predictably attentive but gloomy self. She had seen the all too familiar sideways glances, the quiet, contemplative looks when he thought she wasn't looking. She had quietly taken it till they got back to Washington and she sent him home to his place, away from her finally for the first time in weeks. It had given time to think clearly, to consider alone what he had told her. A virus that was ultimately what they were dealing with, that Scully could understand, certainly much better than aliens and spaceships, though it seemed she wasn't free of those either. Even still, the idea of what Mulder suggested chilled her. Something so quietly insidious could decimate human populations in days, reducing them all to broken shells, like the corpses she saw from Dallas. The only hope was in a weak vaccination, such as the one administered to her, and it had to be given within hours of infection. And there was clearly too little of it, far too little. The only people immune to this virus were those genetically modified in the programs that Mulder's father had been involved in, the ones that had taken her ovum and modified it. The clones, like that of Samantha Mulder, were likely created to survive the holocaust that would follow, and Scully could now guess that Emily was likely another of those experiments, an attempt at creating a human being carrying hybridized DNA with her in order to survive. While knowing that hurt no less, a small part of Scully felt somewhat better at that knowledge that Emily had been for a purpose, for survival, for hope. Considering the odds right at the moment, their prospects looked exceedingly gloomy indeed.

August had arrived, still just as sticky and blast furnace hot in Washington. The bright sunlight had waned somewhat in the late afternoon, though the city still crawled with tourists, taking advantage of the cooling temperatures to stroll around the important sites, taking pictures of Lincoln sitting enthroned and the Washington Memorial, standing like a needle against slowly, setting sun. Scully wasn't particularly surprised to find Mulder on the National Mall, sitting with paper in hand by one of the reflecting pools. The mall had been one of his favorite haunts early on, a place he liked to walk around and think. Cutting across the large expanse of grass, she stopped in front of him. He barely looked up as he handed her a copy of the Washington Post.

"There's an interesting work of fiction on page twenty-four. Mysteriously, our names have been omitted. They're burying this thing, Scully. They're just going to dig a new hole and cover it up." 

He snorted, disgusted as she read the headline. "Local Hanta Virus Outbreak in North Texas Contained." She had expected the whole situation to be glossed over, to be conveniently explained away, but not this quickly. Someone knew she was prepared to go to OPR and had worked quickly to cover it up. She shouldn't have been surprised, and to be honest she wasn't. Just perhaps the slightest bit disappointed.

"I told OPR everything I know, what I experienced, about the virus, how it's spread by the bees from pollen in transgenic crops."

Restlessly Mulder threw himself from the bench, angrily striding away as Scully fell into step behind him. "You're wasting your time, Scully," he barked, with the sort of defeatism that was surprising coming from Mulder. "They'll never believe you, not unless your story can be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced."

"Well, then we'll go over their heads." Hadn't Skinner suggested there might be people who would listen?

"No!" Mulder turned on her, causing her to stop short as his suit coat whipped around. "How many times have we been here before, Scully? Right here. Right here, so close to the truth and now with what we've seen and what we know to be right back at the beginning with nothing." He spat out each word, glaring angrily at the world. He was right, how many times had they been here before? Scully had lost count. This was the closest to the truth they had ever gotten. So many of the pieces lay before them and yet had nothing to prove their case, nothing to show the FBI the veracity of their words. Cassidy's dubious frown came to mind and Scully took quiet satisfaction in the woman's surprised look as she set the singular bee in its vial in front of the woman.

"This is different, Mulder," she replied quietly.

"No it isn't," he blazed angrily. "You were right to want to quit! You were right to want to leave me! You should get as far away from me as you can!"

He melted somewhat, the old familiar guilt and anguish resurfacing yet again. "I'm not going to watch you die, Scully, because of some personal cause of mine. Go be a doctor, while you still can."

So it was this again. Scully shouldn't have been surprised, the self-condemning martyr always tended to come out of Mulder whenever she had barely managed to make it out of a situation with her life. She doubted it was a habit of his he would break anytime soon.

"I can't." She met his stubborn resolve evenly. "I won't. Mulder, I will be a doctor, but my work is here with you now. That virus that I was exposed to, whatever it is, it has a cure. You held it in your hands. How many other lives can we save?"

She was living proof of that.

He looked fully prepared to argue the point, but she reached across the space between them, pulling his hand into hers. "Look," she murmured, smiling slowly up at him. "If I quit now, they win."

They were his own words, ones he spoke in front of his apartment, just before she had been stung. She remembered….she remembered much of that, even if he said nothing. They clearly got through to him, as he smiled, slowly, nodding his head, even as his shoulders slumped in resignation. She tugged gently on his fingers, drawing her beside him as they walked, fingers laced, across the grassy expanse in the waning sunlight.

"I should take you to your mother's, leave you there, and order you never to come to work ever again." He wasn't quit ready to let this go.

"Yeah, because that's worked well for you in the past," she snorted, good naturedly smiling into the reddening sunset. "Face it, Mulder, you aren't getting rid of me. Not yet anyway."

"My father warned me about women like you." He chuckled, fingers tightening on hers for a moment.

"What? Did he fear we would lead you down the pathway of ruin?"

"Insanity was more like it."

"I'm afraid you are already there, Mulder, just go ask OPR right about now. I'm sure they would agree with me."

"Right," he sighed, but didn't look particularly put out. "My father would have liked a girl like you."

Scully thought of Bill Mulder, of the old, worn man she had met in Alaska, frantic about his son and guilty over the destruction his decisions had reeked on his family. Despite all they had discovered regarding him in the years since, a small part of her now finally understood him and why he had done all of this. "I met your father, Mulder. I think he already liked me."

Had Bill Mulder known what was done to her? She wondered. Had he even suspected where the path he had set his son on would lead? Mulder said he had hoped his son would fight the future, would find out the truth of what was happening and help stop what was to come. What an awful, awesome task to put before anyone, especially one's own son. How much guilt Bill carried for his sins, and at the same time, how much hope he had placed in Fox.

The question was now, how in the world would they succeed?

"You hungry?" Mulder's non-sequitur cut across her troubled thoughts and hit her right in the stomach, which rumbled in excitement at the mention of food.

"Yeah," she mused, turning a sly smile up at him. "Feel in the mood for chili cheese fries?"

Her suggestion caught him by surprise. Mulder stopped, tugging her to a halt as she wandered, eyes wide in suspicion. "Did Dana Scully just suggest a giant plate of fat covered carbohydrates for dinner?"

"Sure." It wasn't like she didn't like a fry, just not every night for dinner. "I don't know, I've been craving some since the hospital in Christchurch. There's this diner over on M Street, by my place, they have the best, greasiest, totally heart-clogging fries you'll find."

"You've had these before? Scully, the woman who lives off of weeds and sprouts?"

"What, you want me to treat you to dinner or not?" She met his surprise with eyebrows raised in mild annoyance.

"Free food with cheese on it, you won't hear me say no." He tugged on her hand, pulling her into step once again.

"Don't get used to it, Mulder. Consider it a reward for saving my life, yet again."

"Duly noted. Just don't expect me to take up tofu anytime soon."

"Perish the thought," she grinned, for the moment relishing the simple joy of banter and bad food with this man who had gone to the ends of the earth for her. Let the future come with its viruses, aliens, and invasions. For today, she had this.


End file.
